Posts Tagged ‘Lean’
There are few things in the Lean Manufacturing/Six Sigma/Continuous Improvement/ Kaizen/Toyota Production System buzz-word-world as viral as Bruce Hamilton and the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership. You’ve seen his face. He’s taught you about value and waste and looking at processes with an eye for improvement. He’s taken you to his personal workshop to demonstrate these principles. And the funny thing is, you’re probably scratching your head thinking, “Bruce who?” If you don’t know him as Bruce, then you probably know him as The Toast Guy. Hamilton’s video, Toast...
Date: 04 Aug, 2010
Posted by: David Adams in: Coaching Stories | Health Care | Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence | Results
I’m a big fan of NBC’s Tuesday evening show, The Biggest Loser. If you’re not familiar with the format, the storyline goes something like this: obese contestants spend multiple weeks at The Ranch in order to lose 30% or more of their body weight. The draw of the show is the human dilemma in which we just can’t make phenomenal change without the aid and support of other people. The contestants (it is a contest to see who will lose the most weight) are guided on this journey by Trainer Bob Harper and Trainer Jillian Michaels. So, here’s the thing: you can’t...
Date: 31 Jul, 2010
Posted by: David Adams in: Health Care | Leadership | Lean | Operational Excellence
Assuming that all of us would answer that question differently and that we would most likely say that we are doing OK, but are not yet world class, we need next to consider the gap between our current condition and ideal and develop what I call the target condition. Let’s face it: we won’t become world class overnight. It takes time and a lot of hard work. We shouldn’t just shrug the shoulders and go back to business as usual, as comfortable as that may be. Rather, we need to develop a target condition, one that we develop while aiming at the ideal, world class. Before we do that, however,...
One of the most common “push backs” I encounter as an Operational Excellence coach is when we first introduce simple, individual, “five why” problem solving. I encourage my teams by telling them not to worry about solving problems; I tell them to just fill out problem solving sheets. Lots of them. Shortly, a top leader will take me aside and tell me that I really didn’t mean that…did I? Of course I did! Why would I want them to solve problems when the organization doesn’t have a simple, standard problem solving tool? How will we ever make quantum...
(This is the fourth installment from a speech given at SMC Business Councils a few weeks ago. You can see the previous installments by clicking this SMC Speech tag. The result will give you all the posts.) Around the time when Womack was publishing the first version of Lean Thinking, the seminal Toyota plant in North America, the one they built in Georgetown, Kentucky was celebrating its tenth anniversary. Some of its earliest leaders were moving on to different and new seasons and careers. Some of those early leaders went on to show organizations how to implement the Toyota Production System. ...
