lean for competitiveness

Lean innovations for restaurants

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FeaturesJun 22, 2020
Alessandro Martemucci
FEATURE – The restaurant business has always been tough, but Covid-19 is now presenting it with new challenges. The author shares a few lean practices that can help restaurants develop competitiveness.

An experiment with cellular thinking

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InterviewsJun 18, 2020
Inga Lind Valsdottir and Pétur Arason
INTERVIEW – Today’s story takes us to Iceland, where a senior leader in a utility company introduced cellular thinking to her team in a bid to improve flexibility and better working conditions.

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.

Staying ready in uncertain times

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FeaturesApr 30, 2020
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – Throughout the lockdown, this car-selling business has never lost its focus on people development. The author learns how this approach is helping the firm make the most of the crisis.

Learning fast in the crisis

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FeaturesApr 15, 2020
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – This small manufacturer is relying on Lean Thinking to keep the business running during the Covid-19 crisis, overcome the disruption in its supply chain, and even innovate.

Were we born for a time such as this?

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FeaturesApr 13, 2020
Sharon Visser
FEATURE – This time of crisis is a perfect opportunity to use Lean Thinking to review processes, improve standards and prepare ourselves for the “reconstruction”, says Sharon Visser.

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.

A journey of mind-blowing improvement

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Case studiesOct 3, 2019
Sergio Ferigo
CASE STUDY – Seven years ago, this Italian manufacturer ran an experiment to reduce inventory in its warehouse. Today, lean thinking permeates every aspect of life at FPZ.

Lean logistics for better customer service

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Case studiesAug 6, 2019
Alexandre Cardoso and Cauim Lopes
CASE STUDY – Logistics can be the key to achieving success and creating a competitive advantage in a company. This case study tells the story of a port terminal in Brazil that has used lean to achieve significant gains in managing its road flow.

A sense of heritage in an uncertain world

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FeaturesJul 30, 2019
Catherine Chabiron
FEATURE – In a market where products become obsolete very fast, this Toyota supplier has learned the importance of staying true to its heritage and developing know-how and people’s capabilities.

Cancelling the distance

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Case studiesJul 16, 2019
José Ignacio Garcia Cornejo and Francisco Soler Benito
CASE STUDY – What to do when you operate in a competitive market and are located in a remote corner of Europe, thousands of miles from your customer? One word: lean.

Introducing the Toyota Flow System

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FeaturesJul 9, 2019
Nigel Thurlow, John R. Turner and Brian Rivera
FEATURE – In the age of complexity and disruption, flowing value to customers as quickly as possible is critical. The new Toyota Flow System strives to address this issue. 

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.

Reflecting on a unique partnership

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FeaturesJun 4, 2019
Planet Lean
FEATURE – Following the recent CXO Summit in Singapore, a team from the Lean Global Network reflects on the partnership with SIT and its potential effects on the city-state.

Three key business challenges lean can tackle

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FeaturesMay 7, 2019
Tomasz Koch and Remigiusz Horbal
FEATURE – Ahead of the annual lean conference of LEI Polska, the authors reflect on a recent survey they ran with their clients on the key business challenges they face.

Surviving an inflection point

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FeaturesApr 9, 2019
Jim Morgan
FEATURE – The car industry is undergoing incredible change and ‘disruption’ is the word on everyone’s lips. How can companies survive it? Once again, Toyota shows us the way.

Lean caters for our product development needs

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    string(1553) "This is another new frontier for lean thinking, not because lean efforts in engineering have only begun recently but because it wasn’t until the last few years that a systematic attempt to codify these techniques has been made. These techniques and ideas are loosely brought together under the concept of Lean Product and Process Development (LPPD).

At a time when innovation is the biggest factor behind the success or failure of an organization, finding ways to speed up the development of new products and to ensure these products correspond to actual customer needs is of the utmost importance.

At its core, Lean Product and Process Development aims to create the exact product that people want. And it is clear that developing better products reaching the market faster means profitability into the future. In general terms, lean product development achieves this by creating reusable knowledge that can be used in future iterations of a product and by deployment set-based concurrent engineering (which entails considering sets of designs at once to quickly eliminate inferior solutions, thus shortening development times). It is also useful to integrate the work of engineers with that of the manufacturing department, so that shop floor receives a well-researched, mistake-proof product that is ready for production without the need for extensive and expensive rework.

Interesting contamination exists here with improvement approaches like Lean Startup and Design for Manufacturing."
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FeaturesMar 19, 2019
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – This French company has completely transformed its approach to designing and introducing new products to market by embracing lean product development ideas.

Lean as a two-step engine

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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.

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FeaturesMar 14, 2019
Michael Ballé & Nicolas Chartier
FEATURE – One of the things making lean thinking so hard to explain in general terms is its dual nature as both an organizational and managerial approach. The authors explain how to handle this tension.