kaizen

Creativity takes work, along with inspiration. Inspiration doesn’t always strike us when we plan for it, or when we need it. We have to adopt many different strategies to engage our creativity and intuition within problem solving. Yoshiki Iwata is the founder of the famous lean consulting firm Shingijutsu. Mr.

Small improvements matter. Yet, organizations often de-value them because they are small. They don’t always do it intentionally. They may simple OVER-value the big improvements, through recognition and reward. Here are three important reasons to value making small improvements: 1. It’s how you learn and build culture. Improvement is a

Continuous improvement has always had a strained relationship with technology, for both good reasons and bad. One of the good is that doing things manually and building your own systems can be a one of the most productive means of learning you can create. One of the worst reasons is

What to do when problem solving tools become the problem? One of the funniest blogs in the world, in my opinion, is The Oatmeal. However, this one about pros and cons struck a cord because what makes it funny is exactly that it’s how people work. Here’s the heart of

Kaizen doesn’t literally mean a weeklong event with a cross-functional team for focused improvement. However, in many organizations, that’s what it’s come to mean. Regardless of your name for it – kaizen, kaizen event, Rapid Improvement Event, or something else – these focused kaizens are often a part of a

Guest Post: Donald Sweigart worked with “The Body Shop @” which developed the “Star-Link Certified” Lean business model improving Profitability, CSI, and Cycle Time in the Collision Repair Industry. This model is now licensed by a Fortune 100 in it’s Industry-wide Lean Training. His passion is implementing Lean solutions in

Kaizen event, A3 projects, DMAIC projects – you name it, projects get done and results are generated. But… Are the results sustained? Too often the gains deteriorate over time. There are many reasons from the culture to changing priorities. But at the very least, we should be doing what we

Every day is an adventure. We approach our work with clients with an extreme bias towards flexibility. We do have standard work for activities, but how we might engage a client will be different every time. And that starts with a wide range of requests. But some of them we

No organization can become lean just from running lean projects and events. One organization did over 14,000 lean projects and still failed as a company, because they relied entirely on those events. Some of the problems include: If the methods, tools, and behaviors are not consistent with lean, project results

A useful fable from Aesop, one of my all-time favorite writers, The Mice in Council. Long ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. Some said this, and some said that; but at last a young mouse