FICTION – In the second and final part of this story, the main characters discuss in front of a board. If you regularly use visual management, their conversation will resonate with you.
INTERVIEW - The Food&Beverage department of the Gran Tacande Hotel in Tenerife has been using a powerful visual management tool to effectively visualize and track the variables impacting the work flow.
CASE STUDY – In a Brazilian insurance company, a team worked hard to streamline the revision of dental claims – a great example of Lean Thinking in an administrative process.
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.
VIDEO GEMBA WALK - Last week PL went to Brazil. We joined a doctor at the gemba in one of the hospitals we visited and asked her to show us their visual management system in the ER.
CASE STUDY – This primary care unit in Brazil is hoping to become a model for other units in their system. Take note, this is how Lean Thinking can spread across healthcare systems.
CASE STUDY – This project in Brazil, part of a city-wide effort to improve patient flows, led to impressive results in the waiting time to access cancer care.
FEATURE – We often spend a great deal of time and effort trying to fit our organizations into a box instead of building a box that fits our organization, says Sharon Visser.
FEATURE – The author reflects on the importance of standardized work in her daily life as a manager and explains why one can’t expect to run a company only using reports.
FEATURE – How do kamishibai boards work and what sort of benefits can they bring to a lean transformation? The author discusses what he saw on a recent gemba walk.
FEATURE – This month, the author learns how gemba walks happen in a digital environment, where the work and information are typically hidden in computers.
FEATURE – In this roundup, we look at one of the most important lean tools and how it is deployed in organizations by bringing together PL articles on the subject.
FEATURE – This Siemens Group-owned medium-sized manufacturer of electrical low-voltage devices has been experimenting with hoshin kanri. In this article, they share their experience and lessons learned.
FEATURE – In this article we learn how the creation of an Obeya helped an international insurance company boost collaboration among functions and accelerate the delivery of an important IT project.
FEATURE – How does visual thinking practically help an organization? The author discusses three different ways in which it can be used to benefit a business and help it to improve itself.
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.
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.
CASE STUDY – Effectively deploying and executing your strategy requires mastering quick follow-ups at different levels of the organization – in other words, Daily Management.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – The author visits the Parisian airport of Orly to learn about a pilot project (pun intended) that aims to tackle the late departure of flights using lean thinking.
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.
FEATURE – How an amusement park in Norway is using lean visual management to support actors during their busy schedule and to give visitors an experience they will never forget.
VIDEO – The director of a hotel in Tenerife explains the first steps the team is taking to develop a lean daily management system, and how this connects to the organization's hoshin.
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.
FEATURE – The power of cross-pollination: learning from a manufacturing company has helped a cancer treatment center in Brazil to thrive in its lean transformation.
FEATURE – Sometimes all you need to change minds is a successful experiment. This is how a Norwegian furniture manufacturer managed to transform the way it thinks about its sofa production.
FEATURE – Visualizing the work, increasing customer focus and changing the way to interact with employees has helped a family-run Dutch building maintenance and renovation firm to transform itself.
FEATURE – The Continuous Improvements Boards at the Round Mountain mining site have been critical to shifting the company's culture... the secret, it turns out, is always providing feedback on people's suggestions.
INTERVIEW – The CIO of a French pharmaceutical company gives us a sneak peek of her presentation at the upcoming Lean IT Summit, focused on using the obeya to change the IT department.
CASE STUDY – The Hospital de Bellvitge in Barcelona is relying heavily on hoshin and Kata to create a working environment based on collaboration and joint problem solving.
FEATURE – A senior executive of a Spanish hotel chain shares an example of how the organization’s management system and visual tools have changed over time.
FEATURE – Visuals are a natural way in which human beings learn and teach. The author discusses why visual thinking is part of our DNA and the implications this has on our lives at work.
FEATURE – This nurses-led experiment in Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic is proving successful in getting more patients discharged on time and avoiding surgery cancellations.
FEATURE – As she gets ready to publish a book on her experience running Halfway Toyota Ngami, the author looks back at one of the best visuals the team implemented during the transformation.
FEATURE – Aligning supply flows with demand is crucial to success, but it can be complicated. Lean Thinking can help us identify the strategy and sequence of activities that we need to make it a reality.
FEATURE – Using an effective example from every-day life, the author discusses why Kanban is the gateway to Lean Thinking – and not just a tool.
FEATURE – A lean management system is necessary to effectively run a business. Can Art Smalley’s four types of problems framework help such a system to focus on what’s really important?
FEATURE – The future has never looked more uncertain for restaurants and cafes. The authors share a set of practical lean tips that can guide these organizations navigate the storm.
FEATURE - A Lean Global Network team of lean practitioners and coaches shares a set of lean healthcare tips hospitals can apply today to ready themselves for the peak of Covid-19 cases.
FEATURE – A Dutch transmission system operator is using Lean Planning – built around the Last Planner System – to better manage its complex infrastructure projects.
FEATURE – How lean daily management helped a Brazilian construction company to stabilize production in a tailing dam elevation project.
CASE STUDY – This company in Botswana has embraced lean thinking passionately to build the capacity and ability to deal with higher demand for its converted vehicles. The author tells us about their journey.
FEATURE – In this roundup, we discuss the obeya room and use some of the best articles on the topic to explain why it’s such a powerful tool to drive improvement in your organization.
THE NAKED GEMBA – This useful article helps us to understand the different type of visual controls we can put in place, how they work and which ones to use to best convey our message.
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.
CASE STUDY – The CEO of a hospital in Johannesburg looks back to the last five years to reflect on a lean healthcare transformation that is creating positive outcomes for patients.
THE NAKED GEMBA – Value stream mapping is a fundamental tool in any lean transformation. The author takes us the most common mistakes companies make using it, so that you can avoid the pitfalls.
CASE STUDY – The story of this NGO shows how visualizing the work enables improvement and removes barriers among teams. It is a first, fundamental step towards a lean transformation.
FEATURE – By leveraging lean product and process development principles, Nichirin Spain is becoming more flexible managing last-minute changes in product design requested by customers.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – A culture in which problems are tackled as soon as they appear and the production and product development teams work closely together is helping this French healthcare technology company to thrive.
FEATURE – This Norwegian company has come back from the brink of bankruptcy by rallying its people around a common set of values, by leaning out its processes and by involving its leadership team.
CASE STUDY – A Turkish producer of gas valves for kitchen appliances has discovered the power of the lean principles of pull and flow, reaching results beyond its imagination.
INTERVIEW – With a long history of improvement efforts and a commitment to giving divisions the time to really grasp lean thinking, American Family Insurance is laying the foundation for real and lasting change.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the last episode of our video series, we learn how 365 is using an impressive visual management system to manage the accounting and human resources functions.
THE TOOLS CORNER – Standardizing the work is one of the fundamentals of lean thinking, but without a yamazumi chart visualizing it (and helping us to streamline it) this is impossible.
FEATURE – Teamwork, value stream mapping, 5S, kaizen – a former officer in the Dutch Special Forces reflects on how lean thinking is unconsciously embedded in Special Operations practices.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the second video in the series, we visit the stock-free workshop of one of 365's lean bakeries and learn about quality bread, customer focus and making lives easier for bakers.
VIDEO - Visualization has an important role to play in creating awareness of the problems and highlighting gaps as a key starting point for improvement, and this Finance Manager does it with dedication.
VIDEO - The CEO of a cancer center in Brazil gives us a tour of the their obeya room, taking us through their strategy deployment and explaining how it supports their mission of reducing the burden of cancer.
FEATURE – Long waiting times are bad for both patients and hospitals, but when we talk about heart attacks reducing them becomes a moral imperative. Here’s how Hospital Aliança in Brazil is doing it.
FEATURE – Lean encourages us to go to the gemba as much as we can, but what should we actually do when walking the workspace? It turns out it’s not so much about doing as it is about thinking.
FEATURE – The importance of leveraging early successes to drive engagement to lean is often talked about. The story of this Brazilian hospital confirms this is the way to go.
FEATURE – Having dedicated clinical paths for specific types of patients is a well-known method for reducing waiting times. By doing it, Siena University Hospital managed to slash delays by 80%.
FEATURE – How do you ensure that visual management doesn’t become anything more than a way to reassure the boss, rather than foster a learning and problem solving culture? The author reflects on her company’s journey towards effective visualization.
FEATURE - Strategy deployment is fundamental to a lean transformation, but managers often struggle to understand its importance amid the day-to-day firefighting. This article will tell you how to make hoshin happen.
FEATURE - With daily management at the heart of its modus operandi, an organization will be able to quickly identify deviation, start solving problems and make strategy deployment a success.
FEATURE – An obeya room can be the cornerstone of a lean transformation, but developing a successful visual management environment is easier said than done. Nike’s Technology department shares a few tips.
