Lean thinking for more resilient supply chains

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FeaturesMay 4, 2020
Alvair Silveira Torres Jr.
FEATURE – The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed all the shortcomings of our current supply chains. Lean Thinking can make them more agile, aligned and adaptive.

Immunity

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    string(1594) "Manufacturing is where the lean movement originated from. For their MIT research in the late 1980s (which resulted in the 1990 seminal book The Machine the Changed the World), Jim Womack and Dan Jones identified a set of principles and techniques that made Japanese carmakers far more productive than their Western competitors.

The superiority of the Toyota Production System is now a recognized fact (Toyota has been profitable every year but one, for half a century), which means that today most manufacturing organizations around the world practice lean manufacturing thinking to some extent. The prevalence of this alternative way of thinking and managing in the manufacturing sector often generates confusion in other industries, in which people’s first reaction to improvement attempts is the now proverbial “We don’t make cars. Lean is a manufacturing thing.”

When applied to manufacturing, lean tools like heijunka, SMED or Kanban cards allow for the optimization of production processes and the systematic elimination of waste (in its three incarnations of muda, muri and mura – respectively, non-value-adding work, overburden and unevenness). These happen by implementing the fundamental lean principles of pull and flow. However, it has now been proved that the principles characterizing lean manufacturing are universally applicable. They work in any sector and they apply to any kind of work – even though at times they require some adjustment."
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Case studiesMar 19, 2020
Sergio Ferigo, Gianni Lorenzani and Matteo Consagra
CASE STUDY – This Italian manufacturer has found in lean a way to ensure business continuity and provide support to a distraught workforce in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

What is A3 Thinking?

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FeaturesMar 2, 2020
Roberto Priolo
ROUNDUP – Our editor discusses A3 Thinking and its various uses, curating a list of the best Planet Lean articles published on this topic over the years.

A 15-year journey of people engagement

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    string(1637) "While lean government and lean healthcare technically fall under this category, we consider lean service organizations to be those operating in areas like call centers, retail, hotels, restaurants, offices, banking, and so on. In such environments, there is a direct interaction with the customer, which should be seen as an opportunity to get real-time feedback on our service rather than a nuisance we have to deal with (if you have ever spoken with a customer care representative, you know what this means).

A common problem that practitioners trying to bring lean to services encounter is the difficulty to identify “the work” – whereas in manufacturing the product is in front of everyone’s eyes, in service organizations it is often hidden behind paperwork or a computer screen. Once the work is clearly visible, however, the opportunities for improvement are plentiful. To date, we have seen thousands of organizations striving to lean out the service they provide customers: from restaurants chains in the United States and China to a group of bakeries in Barcelona, from call centers to hotels, the application of lean services ideas can have an extraordinary impact on our economies. Especially if we consider that the service industry accounts for more than three-fifths of the global GDP and employs more than one-third of the global workforce.

Lean thinking is naturally a fit for the service industry, because of its focus on constantly delighting customers and on providing them with value-adding products."
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Case studiesJan 30, 2020
Tom Root
CASE STUDY – Here’s the story of a mature lean company from Michigan. The author tells us about Zingerman’s Mail Order’s lean transformation, their challenges and their successes.

A year in lean articles

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    string(1378) "The idea of “lean management” can refer to both individual managerial behaviors and, more in general, the set of principles and practices characterizing the adoption of lean thinking in an organization.

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FeaturesDec 23, 2019
Roberto Priolo
FEATURE – As 2019 draws to an end, our editor looks back at best lean articles of the year and tells us why Lean Thinking should give us hope for the future.

Project management woes

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FeaturesNov 18, 2019
Severino Abad
FEATURE – What are the main problems people encounter when running a project? The author ran a survey with 126 people over two years and presents the results of his research in this article.

Fancy a cup of lean coffee?

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FeaturesOct 28, 2019
John Montanari
FEATURE – What started as the idea of two friends to meet up and discuss their lean journeys turned into a regular get-together of lean practitioners in the Cape Town area. Another example of the importance of sharing.

The iron law of scale-up

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FeaturesOct 24, 2019
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – As our social systems grow, we need an effective way to manage them. This makes bureaucracies an inescapable part of life for our society and businesses. But how can we mitigate their negative effects?

Lean-n-food

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FeaturesOct 21, 2019
Josh Howell
FEATURE – The food industry is mired with problems all along the value chain. In this call to arms, the author explains why lean thinking is the only tool we have to transform it right now.