Creativity unleashed
FEATURE – A lean coach from Argentina reflects on the transformations he has supported across Latin America and on why lean can help unlock the potential of the continent.
Lean people development
Solving problems by developing people
INTERVIEW – Top leaders at Chilean company Elecmetal talk to us about how lean has transformed their role in the organization and how capability development is fuelling change.
Lean Thinking is personal development
FEATURE – In this interesting piece, the author explains how lean provided everyone, everywhere with a framework to work their intuition muscle and develop insights.
Lean eyes don’t lie
FEATURE – Whether improvement efforts are paying off and people are internalizing a lean way of thinking is a constant worry for many leaders. Here’s a trick to gauge how well – or how poorly – things are going in your transformation.
Emotions on the gemba
FEATURE – They say lean is all about people, and yet emotions – something we all feel and express daily – are largely absent from the lean discourse. The authors discuss the role they play in a lean transformation.
What is standardized work?
ROUND-UP – Standardized work, which lies at the foundation of the TPS house, is a necessary component of a lean transformation. This article looks at the best content on this topic from our archives.
Boosting the lean-agile maturity of our teams
FEATURE – BRQ Digital Solutions shows that effective customer-focused improvement must happen from the inside out, with team development aligned with the pillars of lean digital transformation.
Enabling improvement across our healthcare system
CASE STUDY – How do you give hundreds of primary care units the tools and knowledge they need to make improvements? The Catalan Health Service found the solution in hoshin kanri.
Local experience for a global endeavor
FEATURE – A former ops manager now tasked for improvement across IKEA looks back at what she learned in one of the company’s stores and explains how she hopes to take lean to the whole group.
Operation Honeybee
FEATURE – To consistently identify new and better ways of doing things can breathe new life into a lean journey, but only if the knowledge developed can be effectively shared across the organization.
Turning around our quality
CASE STUDY – For the past year, Elementia Materiales, a producer of materials for the construction industry, has begun a lean journey that’s already brought impressive quality results.
A chat with Furuta-san
INTERVIEW – PL meets the author of the recently published book Welcome Problems, Find Success, who discusses bringing lean to different cultures and changing managerial behaviors.
What to do when the fire is out?
CASE STUDY – This packaging company in Catalonia has been able to cleverly balance the resolution of urgent problems and the advancement of the lean transformation. But what to do when the burning platform is no more?
Reflecting on Nate Furuta’s legacy
INTERVIEW – Looking back at the time he spent at Toyota, Mark Reich reflects on his experience working with Nate Furuta and on his legacy exporting Toyota cultures around the world.
What my Toyota mentors taught me about problem-finding
FEATURE – Introducing his book, the author tells us what his Toyota mentors taught him with their contrasting, but ultimately complimentary approaches to problem finding.
How the gemba shaped my leader standard work
FEATURE – Sharon Visser shares her leader’s standard work from when she ran the Ngami car dealership and encourages us to use what we see at gemba to shape our own.
Building lean into our strategy
CASE STUDY – Brazil-based construction company Andrade Gutierrez has been able to sustain its transformation by consistently developing internal capabilities and making Lean Thinking its strategy.
Lean-powered decision making
FEATURE – As lean thinkers, our focus is on problem-solving. The author explains why effectively solving problems depends on our ability to make the right decisions and suggests the lean community plays closer attention to this.