lean strategy

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.

Cancelling the distance

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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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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.

The synergies you need to succeed

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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.

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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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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.

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.

Blue-sky thinking

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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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Case studiesApr 11, 2019
Kristian Zurek, Paweł Krawiecki and Rafał Mazur
FEATURE – Successfully engaging people and building a solid daily management system is allowing a Velux factory in Poland to fulfill its strategic goals.  

Banking on hoshin

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FeaturesApr 2, 2019
Victor Catisse and Robson Gouveia
FEATURE – What a Brazilian bank has learned from its first few steps in adopting hoshin kanri through structured problem solving and people development.

Monozukuri, Hitozukuri, Kotozukuri

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ResearchJan 8, 2019
Michael Ballé, Daryl Powell and Kodo Yokozawa
RESEARCH – The authors present a new perspective on value creation. In addition to monozukuri (making things) and hitozukuri (making people), they discuss the idea of kotozukuri, making things happen.

Where the true strength of an obeya lies

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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.

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Interesting contamination exists here with improvement approaches like Lean Startup and Design for Manufacturing."
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FeaturesDec 4, 2018
Régis Medina and Sandrine Olivencia
FEATURE – The obeya room limits the number of unknowns before we start developing a product. In this sense, it’s a tool for discovery more than it is for delivery.

From kaizen to innovation

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FeaturesNov 1, 2018
Michael Ballé, Furio Clerico & Fabiano Clerico
FEATURE – Innovation is a process and lean thinking allows that process to take place, by empowering everyone in the company to think creatively about solving customer problems. 

Making hoshin work for our lean hotel

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FeaturesOct 25, 2018
Amalia Vidal Vázquez
VIDEO - The director of a hotel in the Canary Islands explains the hoshin efforts taking place in the organization and takes us through the lean strategy deployment boards she uses to track progress and highlight problems.

Bringing agility to Toyota

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InterviewsAug 22, 2018
Nigel Thurlow
INTERVIEW – The Chief of Agile at Toyota Connected tells us about the agility journey of Toyota and explains why the divide between lean thinking and Agile has no reason to exist.

The depth of lean thinking

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FeaturesAug 14, 2018
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – To really embrace lean thinking means to ensure the bureaucratic structures in our organizations enable our people to excel, rather than constrain their creativity.
benefits of lean accounting

Nick Katko explains the benefits of lean accounting

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FeaturesApr 27, 2018
Nick Katko
FEATURE - Without a solid accounting function no transformation can ever succeed. The author explains why lean accounting should be part of your strategy. 
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How this SME made lean its strategy for sustainable growth

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FeaturesApr 23, 2018
Catherine Chabiron
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – The author visits an SME specializing in the instalment of electrical equipment. Its CEO has learned that integrating lean in their strategy can lead to sustainable growth.
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Orry Fiume on the two realities of lean that scare most CEOs

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FeaturesMar 12, 2018
Orry Fiume
FEATURE – CEOs need to see people as assets and transform their companies’ product development systems if they are to tap into the full potential of a lean strategy.
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Dave Brunt on how the UK Lean Summit is designed

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InterviewsFeb 23, 2018
Dave Brunt
INTERVIEW – This year’s UK Lean Summit promises to be the greatest yet. The icing on the cake? A gemba walk with Dan Jones and Jim Womack. Here we learn how the event is organized.
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Mainstream management after decades of lean

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FeaturesFeb 8, 2018
Michael Ballé, Dan Jones & Jacques Chaize
FEATURE – Lean has now been around for quite some time, and its impact on business world is hard to dispute. But what does it tell us about traditional management practices?
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Michael Ballé on how to ensure lean leads to real advantages

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FeaturesJan 25, 2018
Michael Ballé
FEATURE – Using the Japanese tradition of daruma dolls as an example, the author explains how to turn continuous improvement into concrete challenges – and, from that, real competitive advantage.