FEATURE – In this intimate, moving account, the author shares her journey of personal transformation that caused her mindset and her attitude towards employees to dramatically change.
INTERVIEW – Three hotel directors from the same chain in the Canary Islands give us the lowdown on the company’s strategy to facilitate the transfer of lean knowledge from one location to another.
FEATURE – We tend to describe lean as a holistic approach to a transformation, but we won’t be able to truly embrace it until everyone starts to see the organization as a system.
INTERVIEW – The editors of Planet Lean and Lean Post recently met with a senior executive of Turner Construction in New York City. Together, they discussed leadership development, respect for people, and the future of the industry.
CASE STUDY – Designing good products is challenging in itself, but doing so in harsh, impenetrable environments like the seafloor presents even bigger problems. The answer? Lean product development.
FEATURE – As they progress on their lean journey, organizations need to learn to adjust their stance to the type of problem they face. Introducing his new book, the author offers precious tips on problem solving.
INTERVIEW – This cardiac laboratory in Singapore was targeting one improvement and ended up with something different, but equally impactful for its patient flow.
FEATURE – The author explores the relationship between kanban and improvement and discusses how using it can impact our lean transformation.
INTERVIEW – What is the secret to Toyota’s ability to engage people in continuous improvement? Tracey and Ernie Richardson look back at their time with the company and tell us.
VIDEO - In this video from the recent European Lean Educator Conference, John Shook and Isao Yoshino draw on their experience at Toyota to reflect on the development of lean thinkers.
FEATURE – Dreamplace Hotels in Tenerife have been on an improvement journey for several years, but only recently did they find a way to truly become a learning organization: lean thinking.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – After re-insourcing its bike repair workshop, a distribution center of France's La Poste has begun to recover long-lost knowledge about the work of mailmen and using it to innovate.
PROFILE – In an industry dominated by star chefs and big egos, meeting a humble leader who has made people development his battle cry is a breath of fresh air. PL interviews Legal Sea Food’s Richard Vellante.
RESEARCH – The authors present a new perspective on value creation. In addition to monozukuri (making things) and hitozukuri (making people), they discuss the idea of kotozukuri, making things happen.
FEATURE – Is it possible to build our lean transformation efforts on pre-existing cultural aspects we find in our societies? According to the author, it is… and it works really well.
ROUND-UP – As the year ends, our editor reflects on the state of the lean movement and looks back at the best articles published by Planet Lean this year.
FEATURE – The author, a lean leader from Germany, recounts his experience bringing lean change about and discusses what it takes to truly learn lean thinking.
FEATURE – Hospitals are often part of larger healthcare systems, which makes it critical to learn how to bring lean to such diverse and complex environments. We hear from a large hospital group in Ireland.
CASE STUDY – This Turkish producer of sanitaryware has boosted its quality so dramatically it’s now a player in the German market. It did so by bringing drastic change to its production system.
INTERVIEW – A 22-people veterinarian hospital in Barcelona has recently turned to lean thinking. We caught up with the owner to learn how things have changed six months into the journey.
FEATURE – How an amusement park in Norway is using lean visual management to support actors during their busy schedule and to give visitors an experience they will never forget.
FEATURE – The obeya room limits the number of unknowns before we start developing a product. In this sense, it’s a tool for discovery more than it is for delivery.
GETTING TO KNOW US – It’s easy to over-complicate lean thinking. This month’s Lean Global Network interviewee tells us why we should always start with the work and the people doing it.
FEATURE – The lean mindset Legal Sea Foods has developed is allowing the company to run bold, aggressive experiments that might some day reinvent the way their restaurant kitchens work.
FEATURE – Building on the benefits of the Last Planner System™, lean thinking is supporting people at Turner Construction Company as they solve problems in a structured way.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – The author visits a comparison website that is gradually integrating agile and lean thinking in its processes, identifying new and exciting improvement opportunities.
FEATURE – A laboratory testing services firm in Istanbul has turned to lean management to reduce complexity, shorten lead-times, and make its growth sustainable.
FEATURE – At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the Japanese Men’s 4x100m relay team went from being the underdogs to winning a silver medal by apply lean problem solving.
VIDEO – The director of a hotel in Tenerife explains the first steps the team is taking to develop a lean daily management system, and how this connects to the organization's hoshin.
INTERVIEW – At last month’s Lean Digital Summit in Lisbon, César Gon told attendees how, with lean digital, we have an opportunity to finally get the attention of CEOs and business leaders.
FEATURE – Innovation is a process and lean thinking allows that process to take place, by empowering everyone in the company to think creatively about solving customer problems.
GETTING TO KNOW US – We continue our series of interviews with Lean Global Network directors with a Q&A with another veteran of the global lean movement, Poland’s Tomasz Koch.
VIDEO - The director of a hotel in the Canary Islands explains the hoshin efforts taking place in the organization and takes us through the lean strategy deployment boards she uses to track progress and highlight problems.
PROFILE – Earlier this month, our editor visited the US and sat down with the CEO of a community health center near Boston. His humility and honesty about his lean leadership are striking.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – This French company provides support to the severely disabled, and is currently using lean thinking to limit employee turnover and recruit faster.
FEATURE – This Norwegian company has come back from the brink of bankruptcy by rallying its people around a common set of values, by leaning out its processes and by involving its leadership team.
FEATURE - To get on a path of sustainable growth, an organization must get to know its customers... and there is no better way of doing so than embracing and analyzing their complaints.
INTERVIEW - Grey Dube reflects on the approach, challenges and successes of becoming a lean CEO, and on how this helped turn Leratong Hospital into a lean organization.
INTERVIEW – In this thought-provoking conversation, Michael Ballé and Mark Graban discuss metrics and the managerial attitude towards tracking them.
CASE STUDY – A Turkish producer of gas valves for kitchen appliances has discovered the power of the lean principles of pull and flow, reaching results beyond its imagination.
FEATURE – How “Double-Loop PDCA” was discovered due to a problem with implementing a lean daily management system in a South African hospital.
GETTING TO KNOW US – Earlier this month, our editor visited Istanbul to learn about the work Lean Institute Turkey is doing to spread lean in Turkey and beyond. He sat down with the institute’s President for a chat.
FEATURE – This Dutch company decided to start its lean journey by involving its suppliers in the improvement work. We hear from both customer and supplier.
FEATURE – The application of lean management to education is not new, but we all know how hard changing legacy systems is. This greenfield lean school aims higher, trying to rethink learning altogether.
FEATURE – The belief that standardization kills creativity can be a severe hindrance in a lean transformation. The author discusses how he convinced his team of architects to give standards a try.
FEATURE – Following a recent visit to Toyota, the authors strive to challenge popular beliefs and shed a light on the underlying philosophy that has made TPS a success for over half a century.
FEATURE – Lean book clubs as a way to boost learning and collaboration. A Norwegian firm that has been using them for a decade gives us a few tips on how to make them successful.
OPINION – What happens when a senior executive jumps the fence and finds himself having to drive the very same change he was asking others to create?
BUILDING BRIDGES – In another article for their series, lean digital company Theodo tells us about their efforts to measure and reduce its lead-time to deliver product features.
FEATURE – Enabling its people to think autonomously about problems and fostering collaboration among departments is allowing a French company that makes and installs playgrounds to thrive.
FEATURE – The power of cross-pollination: learning from a manufacturing company has helped a cancer treatment center in Brazil to thrive in its lean transformation.
GETTING TO KNOW US – We continue our series of interviews with key Lean Global Network people with a chat with the President of Holland-based Lean Management Instituut.
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The author discusses the benefits that the many family businesses making up our economies can harness from embracing lean management.
FEATURE – Leading lean transformations in different countries is often considered a challenge. The author claims it’s not as difficult as normally assumed, so long as you stick to the lean fundamentals.
INTERVIEW – The Chief of Agile at Toyota Connected tells us about the agility journey of Toyota and explains why the divide between lean thinking and Agile has no reason to exist.
INTERVIEW – We chat with the CEO of a construction company in Dubai to learn about the competitive advantage that lean thinking is providing them.
FEATURE – The continuous flow of developing people’s capabilities throughout their studies and careers is lacking, to say the least. It’s time we saw this as one big value chain.
FEATURE – To really embrace lean thinking means to ensure the bureaucratic structures in our organizations enable our people to excel, rather than constrain their creativity.
FEATURE – Study tours in Japan are an increasingly popular learning tool for lean practitioners. The author reflects on the first ever tour she ran and on what it left people with.
BUILDING BRIDGES – A member of the Theodo team tells us about their attempts to improve the performance of their Web apps using lean principles.
INTERVIEW – We have come to dread having to interact with customer support representatives, and quite rightly so. Basecamp has made it a mission to bring humanity back to this interaction.
CASE STUDY – The author looks back at the impressive lean transformation of the Hungarian plant of Coloplast, a Danish company offering medical devices and services.
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – As tariffs spread, the author explains where forcing production to move overnight is wasteful, particularly for lean producers.
GETTING TO KNOW US – We sit for a chat with the President of Institut Lean France. Not only has ILF created a vibrant community of lean CEOs in France; it also launched one of the most innovative lean events out there.
FEATURE – The author offers an overview of the ingredients that made lean thinking what it is, of the 30 years of incubation it underwent at Toyota, and of its diffusion from 1980 onwards.
VIDEO INTERVIEW – A store manager explains how a simple kaizen reduced waiting times for customers who want to return products. We use today’s video to launch our Lean Improv contest.
FEATURE – In this frank account, a senior executive discusses the challenges facing an oil and gas company as it tries to manage the complexity of its upstream and downstream supply chains.
FEATURE – The role of the coach in a lean transformation is an often-debated topic. The author discusses his experience building the architecture of the Halfway turnaround.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – In the web marketing world, a competitive advantage is a matter of life and death for businesses. The author meets a firm that has been leveraging lean to gain one.
BUILDING BRIDGES - This month, we hear how addressing work-in-progress led a startup specialized in AI to productivity gains on their machine learning projects.
INTERVIEW – The CEO of a Scottish health board takes us through the organization’s long lean journey, reminding us that allowing people to take the initiative often leads to the most impressive discoveries.
FEATURE – When Praktiker decided to turn to lean thinking, they were faced with the challenge of rolling out its principles and practices to 20 DIY stores. Here’s how they are trying to make it work.
FEATURE – This article offers an exhaustive explanation of how to prepare a Concept Paper and why this is a tool that will help us to succeed in the execution of large change projects.
CASE STUDY – An elementary school in Budapest is trying to bring innovation to the education by harnessing the power of lean thinking combined with a solid digital strategy.
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The author visits a company that has sustained lean for a decade. In trying to understand how they did it, he finds how fundamentally the management system has changed.
CASE STUDY – A physician tells PL the story of how the East Denver Medical Office became a catalyst for the lean transformation at Colorado Permanente Medical Group.
INTERVIEW – With a long history of improvement efforts and a commitment to giving divisions the time to really grasp lean thinking, American Family Insurance is laying the foundation for real and lasting change.
THE TOOLS CORNER – Standardizing the work is one of the fundamentals of lean thinking, but without a yamazumi chart visualizing it (and helping us to streamline it) this is impossible.
INTERVIEW – Convinced that a product that is correctly engineered is easy to manufacture, this product development unit relies on lean thinking to ensure its remotely operated vehicles perform at their best.
FEATURE – A UK-based team of client services managers working for HR consultancy Mercer is using a virtual book club to take their first steps into the world of lean thinking.
FEATURE – Technology should help people in their work, and it is with this in mind that the general manager of this car preparation center decided to learn to develop Apps.
BUILDING BRIDGES – In this article, we learn how a team of software developers leverages the lean concept of “red bins” to ensure the quality of the code they write.
INTERVIEW – The inspirational CEO of a community health center in Massachusetts discusses leadership transition, the role of lean facilitators and front-line engagement.
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The author visits a company that has sustained lean for a decade. In trying to understand how they did it, he finds how fundamentally the management system has changed.
FEATURE – In this interesting piece, the author explains why living up to the ideal of mutual trust is hard, and how lean tools can help us build a workplace based on respect.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the last episode of our video series, we learn how 365 is using an impressive visual management system to manage the accounting and human resources functions.
GETTING TO KNOW US – For our second interview with LGN directors, we travel to Hungary to meet the President of our affiliate institute there. He tells us his country’s need for good workers and how lean can make the difference.
INTERVIEW – Is “lean fire-fighting” an oxymoron? It isn’t if you are the Grand Rapids Fire Department, which has not only turned itself around but is also leading a city-wide lean transformation.
FEATURE – Teamwork, value stream mapping, 5S, kaizen – a former officer in the Dutch Special Forces reflects on how lean thinking is unconsciously embedded in Special Operations practices.
INTERVIEW – Having started to explore TPS in the mid-1970s, Freddy Ballé is one of the great pioneers of our movement. Here, he shares what he learned about Toyota over the past 40 years.
THE TOOLS CORNER – This month, the author discusses how we can ensure quality problems are identified early, tackled swiftly and prevented from reoccurring.
INTERVIEW – With the closure of Toyota’s operations in Altona, the land Down Under is left without its lean poster child. Alister Lee tells us who the community there should look to next.
INTERVIEW – In this follow-up conversation with the Hospital Moinhos de Vento in Brazil, we learn about the elements that are helping them to make lean stick.
FEATURE – In this article, we learn how a simple andon system and lean problem solving helped Theodo move past some of the most common obstacles that Agile alone can’t overcome.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In this episode of our video series, we visit 365's super-lean workshop, where small batches and a clever use of space allow for unprecedented levels of flexibility in manufacture.
FEATURE – Lean thinking is still largely absent from the mining industry. The author explains the great opportunities that lie ahead for an industry with a huge potential to improve.
INTERVIEW – Bringing nurses together and giving them a space to discuss problems on a regular basis has allowed this hospital in Holland to successfully embrace lean thinking and reap its benefits.
PROFILE – What does one learn from working for Toyota over 40 years? This Australian leader has developed a unique holistic view, and a strong set of technical and social skills.
FEATURE - Without a solid accounting function no transformation can ever succeed. The author explains why lean accounting should be part of your strategy.
INTERVIEW – Ben Hartman has used lean in his micro-farm in Indiana for six years. Not only did he find in it a way to support his family doing what he loves, he might have also discovered how to transform our food system.
