Planet Lean: The Official online magazine of the Lean Global Network
What Toyota and the Green Berets have in common

What Toyota and the Green Berets have in common

Sam MacPherson
•
April 9, 2015

INTERVIEW - What do the United States Army’s Special Forces unit and Toyota have in common? To find out, we spoke to the Green Berets’ former Director of Training at the LEI summit in New Orleans.


Interviewee: Sam MacPherson, Lean Enterprise Transformation Leader at the Lean Leadership Academy and former Director of Training of the United States Army’s Special Forces unit.



THE INTERVIEWEE

Sam MacPherson photograph
Sam MacPherson is a lean enterprise transformation leader and has dedicated over 28 years to developing organizational leaders, senior leadership teams, and designing lean enterprise management systems

Read more

The lean transformation of New York's public hospitals
May 29, 2014
The lean transformation of New York's public hospitals

INTERVIEW - New York City's public hospitals system leveraged lean principles and techniques to improve the quality of care and boost organizational performance.

Continue reading
Lean eyes don't lie
November 8, 2022
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.

Continue reading
A guide to applying standard work in a lean transformation
January 6, 2015
A guide to applying standard work in a lean transformation

FEATURE – René Aernoudts discusses how to use standardized work in an organization, providing a lowdown of the techniques available to the lean practitioner.

Continue reading
A decade at the gemba, taking notes
July 7, 2026
A decade at the gemba, taking notes

INTERVIEW – Over the past decade, Catherine Chabiron’s Notes from the Gemba series has turned into some of the most insightful content on Planet Lean. Our editor sits down with the author to talk genchi gembutsu, writing, and building a lean community.

Continue reading

Read more

No items found.