Features

Facing the emergency

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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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FeaturesApr 1, 2020
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – In this new series - one new article every week during the Covid-19 crisis) - the author asks companies how they are reacting to this health emergency. First up, Proditec.

Lean healthcare on the front lines

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    string(1608) "Lean thinking may have been born in Toyota in the 1950s and 1960s, but it wasn’t until after the year 2000 that a few hospitals began to explore its application to the healthcare industry (lean healthcare). These pioneering organizations came together to share their stories at the first Global Lean Healthcare Summit in the UK in 2007, which in turn triggered many more experiments around the world. Since then, interest has kept growing.

Some fifteen years on, we have hundreds of examples to learn from, from clinics and departments through to entire hospitals and even whole hospital systems. Not all early experiments succeeded, and we are still a long way from making lean a widely recognized way of working across the industry.
Healthcare providers around the world still face huge challenges, as ageing populations and unhealthy lifestyles boost the demand for healthcare faster than the growth of incomes and tax revenues from the middle classes. At the same time, the quality of care has not improved as much as the quality of other services in the economy, which is why more and more healthcare organizations are turning to lean.

Historically, lean healthcare ideas have been applied in large hospitals, but in the past few years we have started to see the philosophy adopted in earnest in many smaller organizations following a do-it-yourself approach that has generated many positive benefits. An impressive example is the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf near Barcelona."
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FeaturesMar 30, 2020
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – Our coverage of the Covid-19 emergency continues with an article discussing how lean healthcare principles can support and protect the professionals at the front line of this war.

Panic buying and the Coronavirus

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FeaturesMar 27, 2020
Dave Brunt
FEATURE – With the Covid-19 emergency, people across the world have been stockpiling on household products, exposing the shortcoming of batching-prone supply chains.

Harada-san and the steps to better Jidoka

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FeaturesMar 23, 2020
Toshiko Narusawa, Joe Lee and John Shook
FEATURE – In the first piece of a series on Takehiko Harada’s contribution to TPS, the authors discuss the Nagara Switch and how it helps to achieve better Jidoka.

Why bother with lean when we’re all doomed?

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FeaturesMar 16, 2020
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – When faced with a crisis, like the current one, it is natural to wonder, “Why bother?”. Yet, this is when we most need a growth mindset and a framework like lean thinking to figure out a way forward.

The power of lean planning

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    string(1440) "The construction industry has a reputation for delays, bad quality and unsafe working conditions. This makes it a prime candidate for the implementation of lean principles and techniques. The idea of 'lean construction' has been around since the early 1990s, when a group of academics in California started to look at opportunities for the application of lean in the sector. One of the results of this early work was the introduction of the Last Planner System to better manage construction sites.

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FeaturesMar 12, 2020
The TenneT team
FEATURE – A Dutch transmission system operator is using Lean Planning – built around the Last Planner System – to better manage its complex infrastructure projects.

Hoshin kanri in a picture

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FeaturesMar 9, 2020
Nestor Gavilan
FEATURE – Hoshin is a powerful management practice that aligns the work at different levels to a company’s strategic goals. The author offers a one-page visual summary.

Gemba walks: the common pitfalls

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FeaturesMar 5, 2020
Severino Abad
FEATURE – The author discusses the most common mistakes leaders make during gemba walks and the things they need to keep in mind to make the most of this important management practice.

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.

The gift that keeps on giving

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FeaturesFeb 27, 2020
Karen Gaudet
FEATURE – The benefits of establishing a lean operating system will support the growth and success of a business in the long term, says Karen Gaudet looking back at her experience at Starbucks.

Enhancing your gemba skills

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FeaturesFeb 24, 2020
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – Michael Ballé shares a few tricks he uses to escape his default thinking and ensure he makes the most of every gemba walk he goes on.

Sorting out sourcing

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FeaturesFeb 20, 2020
Carolina Moraes, Priscilla Ribeiro, Alaine Soares, and Tatiane Zutin
FEATURE – The Sourcing team at insurance company SulAmérica tells us about how they were able to transform the process in their department in order to become more efficient in dealing with their workload.

The Crab Method

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FeaturesFeb 17, 2020
Cevdet Özdoğan
FEATURE – We hear it time and time again: in a lean transformation, middle management is the biggest hindrance to change. The author explains his strategy to win them over.

Learning to be lean chameleons

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FeaturesFeb 13, 2020
Teri Laeder
FEATURE – In this candid, personal account, the author shares her experience as a lean coach, her challenges and success, and how she adapts to different situations.

Gap analysis, made simple

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FeaturesFeb 10, 2020
Nestor Gavilan
FEATURE – The difficulty of sustaining results often stems from our inability to monitor the KPIs that truly matter and to focus on business priorities. The author suggests a hands-on approach to strategy deployment.

Predictable vs unpredictable work

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FeaturesFeb 6, 2020
Dave Brunt
FEATURE – It is a common misconception that our work is too unpredictable to fit into a standardized approach. The author debunks this myth. 

Grievances first

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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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FeaturesFeb 3, 2020
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – How do you kick off a lean journey? This French company has chosen to begin by analyzing and tackling each customer complaint.

What does a lean sensei bring to the party?

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FeaturesJan 27, 2020
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – Lean coaching is all the rage these days, but to what end? The author reframes the role of a sensei as an expert in achieving productivity by engaging everyone in kaizen.