Lean culture

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.

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.

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.

The practice of reflection

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FeaturesJan 6, 2020
Denise Bennett
FEATURE – The holidays are a time for reflection. The author shares some her reflections on her experience with lean thinking and the role of leadership in a lean transformation.  

When startups visit Toyota

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    string(1476) "Improvement methodologies have been used in the software world for a very long time, with approaches like Agile and Lean digital methodology playing a key role in speeding up the development of digital products. Agile principles and ideas - like Scrum and its way of structuring teams and organizing the work - have found their ways into many a lean company. Lean digital thinking and the Toyota Production System, in turn, have greatly influenced the development of these approaches.

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FeaturesDec 12, 2019
Sandrine Olivencia, Lucie Notaro & Régis Medina
FEATURE – Digital organizations are starting to recognize that Toyota’s unique approach can show them the way forward, just like it does “traditional” organizations. Here, we hear from a few startup CEOs following their trip to Japan.

The community and the individual

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Opinion piecesDec 5, 2019
Peter Willats
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?

Change management from the inside out

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FeaturesDec 2, 2019
Karen Gaudet
FEATURE – The author discusses how the daily practice of lean thinking develops perseverance and the grit a leader needs to improve an organization.

Practice makes perfect

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FeaturesNov 28, 2019
Dave Brunt
FEATURE – Much like lean management, attaining perfection in music requires constant practice. The author looks back at his musical past and at a recent Lean Global Network samba gig.

A lean transformation is a cognitive transformation

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FeaturesNov 25, 2019
Eivind Reke, Robert Kusén & Daryl Powell
FEATURE – By looking at two practical examples, the authors discuss the cognitive shift towards learning and continuous improvement that takes place in a lean transformation.

Leading large-scale lean change

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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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InterviewsAug 1, 2019
Rose Keanly
INTERVIEW – Rose Keanly discusses the role of lean in a strategic business transformation in the financial services sector and the dos and don’ts of bringing lean to a large organization. 

Through hardship to the stars

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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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Case studiesJul 25, 2019
Vicenç Martínez Ibañez and Antoni Campos Rubiño
CASE STUDY – Catalonia's largest hospital is undergoing a successful transformation - supported by pioneering hoshin experiments - that has already turned it into a poster child for lean healthcare in the region.

The synergies you need to succeed

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FeaturesJul 11, 2019
Karen Gaudet
FEATURE – While at Starbucks, the author learned the importance of collaboration among the key functions of Operations, HR and Finance to advance a lean transformation.

Fertile ground for lean seeds

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FeaturesJun 25, 2019
José Ferro, Ricardo Itikawa and Bruno Battaglia
FEATURE – Lean Institute Brasil is running pioneering lean experiments in agriculture. The authors reflect on the challenges of transforming traditional farming culture and the opportunities lean affords.

A people-centric lean HR strategy

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Case studiesJun 20, 2019
Eugenio Ylleras, José Manuel Fernández and Sheila Gonzáles
CASE STUDY – This automotive parts supplier based in southwest Spain is discovering the power of lean thinking applied to recruitment and Human Resources.

A crazy little thing called change

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OpinionMay 21, 2019
Rose Heathcote
COLUMN – In her first column, the author reflects on the role of leadership in striking a balance between the enthusiasm for change and the need to involve everyone in a transformation.

Defining lean is useful, lean definitions are useless

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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.

In the first case, lean management is closer in meaning to the idea of “lean leadership” and entails the development of behaviors that foster continuous improvement at the front line, such as respect for people, asking questions (rather than providing answers), going to see to really understand the work and the causes of problems, and scientific problem solving. In the second instance, lean management describes the lean philosophy more in general.

In its more general meaning, lean management – or lean thinking, if you prefer – derives from the Toyota Production System and is now recognized as a superior management approach that, through continuous improvement, customer focus, teamwork and relentless people engagement, leads to great results in terms of quality, performance, delivery, and cost. The promise of lean management is to create the most value for customers using the least possible amount of resources. As an approach to running a business, it brings benefits to all parties involved, from customers to employees, suppliers to wider society.

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FeaturesMay 16, 2019
Russell Watkins
FEATURE – In this article, the author reflects on how his understanding of lean thinking evolved over time – as did the way he defined it.

Truly leading a transformation

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Case studiesMay 14, 2019
Carolyn Lum and Jakob Brix Danielsen
FEATURE – Philips has embarked in an ambitious development program for lean executives, which is helping the organization make substantial progress in their transformation.  

The energy to get things done

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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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FeaturesMar 7, 2019
Eivind Reke, with Niku Jalkanen
FEATURE – When people become enthusiastic about improvement work, there's no limit to what can be achieved. Join the author on a visit to a Finland-based manufacturer, whose lean efforts range from production to customer service.