A key point of Mike Rother’s book Toyota Kata is that the organization develops a very deep core-competency in problem solving. In order to develop competency at anything, there must first be a standard to strive for. What I am realizing is the precise method used doesn’t matter nearly as much as having a method [...]
What is the role of your lean facilitator? This question comes up now and again, was recently posed on the LEI forums by someone looking for help with a job description. I extrapolated from his question that he was looking to the job description as a line of defense against dilution of the facilitator’s focus [...]
This sketchcast from Dan Pink covers the same ground as his TED talk that I posted a few weeks ago, but it is more succinct and direct so I wanted to share it. When we look at what drives kaizen and continuous improvement, it is important to understand what motivates people to find a better [...]
27 months ago I wrote a piece about a “ firefighting culture” where I described the actual process used to fight fires – following PDCA. I have learned a few things since then, and I want to tighten my analogy a bit. What is the core thinking behind true firefighting? This is actually closer to [...]
Here is an “ah-ha” or even one of those “oh s#!&” moments I had as Mike Rother was talking about his Toyota Kata research last week. Solution How Solution is Developed Toyota / “Lean” Left Open Very specific – guided and directed. Traditional Management Given / Directed Not specified, left to “empowered” employee. When [...]
One of the issues Mike Rother says he has had with the coaching questions in Toyota Kata is question #5 “When can we go see what you have learned?” In the west, inevitably it seems, once the word “When” is uttered, everyone in the conversation leaps to hear “When will you be done?” no matter [...]
The teacher hasn’t taught. This article, titled “Why China is Not Ready for Lean Manufacturing” presents an account of trying to teach “lean manufacturing” in a Chinese factory. The experience is summed up in a couple of key paragraphs: The team arrived in Dongguan and went to work giving an overview class on Lean techniques. [...]
In my review of Toyota Kata by Mike Rother, I suggested that the staff-level practitioners who are embedded in almost every company that is “implementing lean” could put those practices to work immediately, even if it was not an ideal “top down” teaching process. This week I gave that a try. I was coaching a [...]
Over the decades, I have observed that it is quite common for organizational leaders to try to use the word “opportunity” when talking about a problem. I can understand the desire to do this – we typically think of “problems” as something to do with people. But I find the emphamistic language… problematic. [...]
I would like to thank everybody for a really engaging dialog in the previous two posts about 5S audits. Now I would like to dig in and look at what an “audit” is actually finding, and how we are responding to those issues. Our hypothetical production area is getting an audit. The checklist says things [...]