Lean Challenge Challenge Your Lean Thinking

Kaizen, commonly referred to as “continuous improvement,” proves very helpful in many workplaces. Businesses and organizations create cultures where employees constantly look for small changes they can make to improve the way the facility operates. Over time, these small improvements can lead to significant improvements in efficiency overall. We always enjoy hearing about unique ways kaizen ideas have been used ...

What if kaizen and lean thinking were implemented at a charity like a food bank? You might end up with an organization that looks like the Food Bank for New York City, the country’s largest food bank, which has distributed more than 63 million meals worth of food in the past year. Under its current leadership, the food bank’s workers have ...

A lean workplace seeks ways to make itself more productive and more efficient, and a recent article at Reliable Plant and Lean Manufacturing Journal asserts that 3-D printing naturally fits in well with lean thinking. 3-D printers, the article explains, can make prototyping and customizing easier, which creates a less wasteful manufacturing environment. Additional benefits of 3-D printers are they can ...

When we talk about continuous improvement—sometimes referred to by the Japanese term kaizen—we often discuss it in the context of the workplace. We think about ways that process such as assembling parts, organizing the workspace, or communicating with coworkers can be improved. An article in this month’s issue of the New Yorker titled “Getting Better at Getting Better” examines the way ...

A recent article at EHS Today explains how a Toyota plant that manufactures forklifts in Columbus, Ind., makes safety a part of daily life. The facility refers to its safety system as K-HYP, which standards for “kaizen” (continuous improvement) and “How’s your process?” At the facility, safety is a topic of discussion at morning meetings, and each employee is given the ...

Mark Graban over at Lean Blog recently wrote about a GE Capital TV commercial that includes the Lean turnaround process in a factory. Graban said: In the 60-second piece, GE highlights how their advisors helped a manufacturing company double efficiency by using Lean methods and by asking “the important question – why?” What happened? “Ideas for improvement started pouring out.”  The ...

Lean manufacturing principles may have originated in manufacturing industries, but in recent years they’ve been used quite effectively in the healthcare industry, too. This topic is covered in a podcast over at Mark Graban’s Lean Blog, in which Graban interviews Paul Plsek, author of the book Accelerating Health Care Transformation with Lean and Innovation: The Virginia Mason Experience. The two ...

Janska, a women’s clothing company that strives to keep all of its manufacturing in the U.S., recently found a way to increase sewing productivity and revenue by using a lean strategy commonly used in industrial manufacturing workplaces: one-piece flow. This method has each person on an assembly line—in this case, each sewer—perform one step of the process and then pass ...

Lean methodologies can be used on an organizational level, but also on an individual level. You can use lean to improve your use of time and even to clean out your inbox. In the TEDx Talk above, Bill Peterson, a lean instructor and consultant, explains the basics of lean, as well as how to make lean work for you to help ...