We were down on the shop floor watching an assembly operation. The takt time was on the order of three hours. The assembler was new to the task, and the team leader periodically came by and asked if he was “doing OK.” The reply was always in the affirmative.
As the takt time wound down to [...]
This is Part 3 of a multi-part review.
Part 1 is here.
Before I get into it, I will break the rules of blogging and acknowledge a time gap here. I did finish the book shortly after I wrote part 2, in fact, I didn’t want to put it down. So now I am going back [...]
This is Part 2 of a multi-part review.
Part 1 is here.
In my
review of Kaizen Express back in May, I took
LEI to task for two things – First, I didn’t feel Kaizen Express contributed anything really new to the body of knowledge. I would have been satisfied if it had more clearly explained [...]
In a
previous post, I talked about Steven Spear’s observation about how a sensei saw a process and the problems. Jeffery Liker, Mike Hoseus and David Meier have done a good job capturing how a sensei teaches and summed it up in a diagram in the book
Toyota Culture. (for those of you following at [...]
Now and then something comes across that makes it all worth it. And nothing is more “worth it” to me than to know something I said or did contributed to someone’s insight or impetus to do something spectacular.
Yesterday Earl sent me an email that is one of those times. I was going to edit it [...]
John Shook’s latest column on
LEI’s site is about coaching and whether it is better to give them the answers or just ask questions.
Asking questions in a way that actually teaches is a skill that we, as a “lean” community do not foster very well. Certainly in U.S. corporate culture, we are expected to be [...]
Following on from the buzz created by the last couple of posts, I would like to go back in time a bit.
In 2005 Steven Spear wrote a working paper called “
Why General Motors Lost and Toyota Won.” A reader can clearly the see emerging themes that were developed into his book
Chasing the Rabbit .
Spear [...]
A frequent topic in the
lean.org forums is some version of “what is the difference between lean and ____” where the blank is one of the industry buzzwords. Some of the common ones are various prefixes to “Sigma.” Others are old standards such as TQM, SPC, TOC, etc. These discussions are always interesting as the [...]
When real effort is spent getting to the cause of problems (vs. a reflex to find someone to blame), ambiguity often enters into the picture.
Problem solving is a process of asking questions and clarification.
Is a “defect-free” outcome of the process specified? Does the Team Member know what “success” is?
Is there a way for the Team [...]
Get to the root cause by “Asking Why?” five times.
We have all heard it, read it. Our sensei’s have pounded it into us. It is a cliché, obviously, since getting to the root cause of a problem is (most of the time) a touch more complicated than just repeatedly asking “Why?”
Isn’t it?
Maybe not. Maybe [...]