“Global Jidoka” to mitigate the effects of the virus?
COLUMN – The author imagines an ideal, Jidoka-inspired response to the Coronavirus pandemic. This scenario might be utopian, but could it inform the definition of our True North?
Columns
Is our response to Covid-19 fundamentally flawed?
OPINION – Discussing the lack of structured problem solving in the fight against the pandemic in Italy, the author makes the case for blanket-testing as a possible way to understand the current state.
Coping with Covid-19: lessons from The Plague
COLUMN – With the Covid-19 pandemic spreading around the world, John Shook shares six ideas that are guiding him as 1.5 billion of us go into lockdown.
The community and the individual
COLUMN – As individuals, how do we relate to the Lean Community? And what motivates us to stubbornly continue down the improvement path, often against all odds?
What sustainability looks like
OPINION – The team at Instituto Lean Management in Barcelona comments on recent news from the Catalan healthcare sector and reflects on lean sustainability.
When a top exec becomes the lean manager
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?
Lean thinking for the family business
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The author discusses the benefits that the many family businesses making up our economies can harness from embracing lean management.
A lean take on trade
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – As tariffs spread, the author explains where forcing production to move overnight is wasteful, particularly for lean producers.
What influences our ability to sustain change?
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.
Jim Womack on what makes for a good lean employer
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – What does a lean employer look like? In this month’s column, the author reflects on the long-term commitment to employees a company engaged in lean thinking should make.
Lean has changed the production line forever
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – This month, the author looks at the production line, a century-old idea that still fascinates us, reflecting on how lean thinking has changed it.
Jim Womack shares his lean take on Tesla
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – In his first column of 2018, the author looks at one of the most talked about companies in the world, Tesla, from a lean point of view.
Jim Womack on the importance of spreading the lean word
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – Ahead of the holidays, for his last column of the year, the author reminds us of the power of sharing. Go out and spread the lean word!
Jim Womack provides us with a few tips on how to sustain 5S
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – 5S seems to mean different things to different people. What’s common, however, is the difficulty to sustain it. The author offers a few tips.
Create stable, fulfilling jobs to fully benefit from lean
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – Toyota’s commitment to employees reminds us that it is impossible to tap into the full potential of lean without providing people with stable, gratifying employment.
Trust your people and give them access to knowledge
COLUMN – As lean teaches us, a command-and-control approach to management is bound to fail. What we need instead is trust in people, and decentralization of knowledge.
Reflections on a week in Toyota City
WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – Last week, during a study mission in Japan, the Lean Global Network visited Toyota. Here, Jim shares his thoughts on what we saw and learned.
Boaz Tamir on why success does not come down to chance
OPINION – The rise and fall of organizations does not depend on chance or bad luck. It generally stems from a fundamentally flawed strategic approach that fails to define a purpose, alienates workers and ignores customers.