Articles

FEATURE – For this new monthly article, we will be asking five lean practitioners the same question and share their answers with you. We started by asking them about their biggest lean mistake.

RESEARCH – The author explores the effectiveness of five common managerial practices in driving a corporate lean initiative forward, analyzing the data gathered while visiting 36 factories of a large corporation.

INTERVIEW – At the recent Lean Transformation Summit in Las Vegas, our editor sat down with Nationwide to hear more about the mutual company’s application of lean thinking to IT and how they are working towards getting 9,000 people onboard.

PROFILE – This month we meet another member of the lean community, a true pioneer of lean thinking, who contributed to introducing the methodology in Australian cities and healthcare organizations.

FEATURE – The experience of solar company SunPower shows how, by marrying the concept of circular economy, lean principles can help us to transform our habits and save our planet.

OPINION – Working on new product development without first assessing potential risks will almost certainly lead you to failure. Can you imagine the Wright brothers flying without having done preliminary studies on the feasibility of their idea?

FEATURE – Repeating the same patterns of work over six to eight cycles of production generates improvements - based on people, not machines - and facilitates the adoption of lean principles and tools.

CASE STUDY – The extraordinary transformation of Kinross' Round Mountain gold mine in Nevada over the past six years shows that lean thinking can – quite literally – move mountains.

FEATURE – What are the immediate signs that tell us that our workplace is not conducive to kaizen? The author draws on his experience as a coach at the gemba to highlight them. Look out for them in your own company!

CASE STUDY – How an improvement program of the British national healthcare system inspired a Belgian hospital to launch an organization-wide lean transformation with the active support of the HR and nursing departments.

FEATURE – Drawing from his direct experience at the gemba, the author shares what he learned about applying lean thinking to his family’s construction company, and a few useful tips.

INTERVIEW – We asked Greg Lane to reflect on his experience with lean transformations and to share his thoughts on the leadership behaviors that best support them.

WOMACK'S YOKOTEN – As a new age in aerospace dawns, with a need to move from huge and bespoke designs to affordable and high-volume production, lean thinking has a key role to play. But will the industry listen?

INTERVIEW – Mike Hoseus reflects on his time at Toyota and on how the respect for people side of lean thinking is too often neglected and we tend to focus on continuous improvement only. The two must go together, or your house will collapse.

PROFILE – While pioneering the application of lean thinking in healthcare, Alice Lee realized that you should always approach teaching as you do problem solving: scientifically, situationally, and with the humility of a learner.

OPINION – Most organizations today can only dream of receiving the type of enthusiastic support that certain sports teams get from their fans. In order to do that, they need to forget short-termism and put their customers first.

INTERVIEW – Last month we caught up with Toyota veteran Art Smalley in Las Vegas and discussed with him the role of leadership in a lean transformation and the four different types of problem solving he talks about in his new book.

FEATURE - The original TPS "house" had levelled production at its foundation because Toyota understood that establishing and sustaining continuous improvement is impossible without creating stability in production first. What about your transformation?

FEATURE – Faced with long lead-times to hire new people and with tens of millions paid in sick leave every year, the HR department of Dutch railway operator NS has turned to lean thinking to set them on the right track for the future.

FEATURE - All too often, A3 thinking is perceived as a prescriptive approach rather than a series of questions that progressively deepen our understanding of a situation. So what is problem solving really about? And how do we ensure it takes root across the organization?

FEATURE – Lean thinking is increasingly applied end to end, reaching virtually every area and function of the enterprise, and yet in many companies IT is still left out of the lean transformation. Isn't this dangerous in a world that is going more and more digital?

WOMACK'S YOKOTEN - Kaizen or kaikaku? This is the problem. When it comes to the pace of change, should we carry on with small, incremental improvements or aim at more revolutionary changes instead?

INTERVIEW – Planet Lean speaks with David Mann about the importance of combining the lean production and the lean management systems – the tools and the culture – to create sustainable results.

FEATURE - What if it were your staff driving change rather than managers? A focus on improvement at the front line and on people development proved critical to the lean transformation of a Stanford hospital.

PROFILE – It isn’t every day that you come across a hospital CEO coaching people on A3s and following his own standard work. So when you do, it’s important to share their story. This month we profile the CEO of a Brazilian cancer treatment center.

OPINION – It might seem like a subtlety, but the distinction between discussion and dialogue is actually fundamental as we try to find new ways to unleash organizational creativity.

INTERVIEW – Planet Lean talks with Drew Locher about bringing change to an office setting, lean in small- and medium-sized firms and why improving and managing go hand in hand.

FEATURE – Coaching people is the only way to truly develop their capabilities, but what does it take to become a good lean coach? Josh Howell on how humility helped him to improve his ability to coach.

FEATURE – A local branch of Italy’s Democratic Party has started using lean principles and tools to organize its activities more effectively and to counteract the discouragement that followed a bad electoral defeat.

FEATURE – It might be widely used as a planning system, but ERP – Ian Glenday argues – is not conducive to an environment where lean thinking can thrive: because it is based on a batch logic, it always creates a different plan and, with it, instability.

FEATURE – Moving her assistant's workstation next to hers and introducing standardized work helped a family physician in California to provide better, faster care to her patients and to avoid burnout.

FEATURE – The goal of your digital transformation is not only to develop new technologies and innovative processes, but to turn your people into the kind of "smart creatives" who will lead your firm into the future. Lean will get you there.

FEATURE - Italian physicist Enrico Fermi is one of history's greatest "lean scientists," who developed a revolutionary approach to research and mentoring from which lean managers can still draw inspiration.

OPINION – A new publicly owned open-source technology promises to make direct, unmediated trade relations trustworthy, opening the door to an era of democratization and cooperation in global commerce.

PROFILE – Lean leaders are often tempted to jump in and fix the problems they see. Julie McGrory is successfully transforming the culture of a large and traditional government organization by learning to take a step back and letting people take the lead.

FEATURE – Repetitive flexible supply is a very effective method to level production scheduling, but as a FMCG company in the Netherlands found out, sometimes a number of conditions must be met before the approach becomes viable.

FEATURE – Just like a diet alone won't result in real fitness, cost cutting is in itself not enough to ensure an organization is healthy. Making our companies fit and sustaining results begin with building capabilities in our people and improving our processes.

INTERVIEW – At the recent UK Lean Summit, we met the Head of Student Services of an English high school. We asked her about the interesting work the school is doing to improve the delivery of education to students with special needs using lean thinking.

FEATURE – Does lean management help us at strategic level as much as it does operationally? What’s the strategic thinking behind lean thinking? Michael Ballé answers these questions by looking back at some of history’s great military strategists.

INTERVIEW – At the recent UK Lean Summit, Ian Hurst and Keith Edwards of the Toyota Lean Management Centre ran an insightful workshop on standard work. We sat down with them to discuss standardization, respect for people and waste elimination.

WOMACK'S YOKOTEN – Last month nations signed a greenhouse gas emissions deal – on paper, an insurance policy against climate change. But if action is to follow promises, the cost of the insurance premium, as perceived by voters and governments, must be lowered. Lean thinking can help.

ARTICLE - Networking and learning from other practitioners is for many the number-one reason to attend a lean event. The Lean Summit France 2016, in Lyon on April 6-8, will be a great opportunity to network with like-minded people and to understand how a lean CEO thinks.

FEATURE ARTICLE – Danish company Solar has applied lean management principles to the rollout of a new ERP system to gradually strengthen the ties between an isolated IT department and the rest of the organization.

OPINION - Managers who want to hold on to their hierarchically controlled businesses and defend them against creativity and change are not protecting their organizations, but putting them at risk.

PROFILE - Three decades in Toyota South Africa and an ability to see the value stream as a whole are helping Terry O'Donoghue, COO of Halfway Toyota, to bring lean thinking to a chain of car dealerships.

INTERVIEW – At the recent Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Brussels, Planet Lean editor Roberto Priolo sat down with John Toussaint to discuss the state of lean thinking in healthcare, its challenges and its opportunities.

INTERVIEW – Planet Lean interviews Silvia Cespa of Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, a bank that boasts one of the most advanced IT departments in Europe. How did it get there? Through a six-year transformation towards lean banking.

WOMACK'S YOKOTEN - If you are going to succeed at one of your resolutions for 2016, let it be that of always starting off a lean transformation with a deep analysis of the work at a single point in your organization, and then escalating your efforts to reach all the factors influencing the work.

FEATURE ARTICLE - With 2015 drawing to an end, it's time to look back at the year that was and at the articles that our readers have enjoyed reading the most. So here is the Top 10 most read articles of 2015 on Planet Lean.

PROFILE – Before anything else, a good lean leader must be open to changing and continuously running experiments – something Christophe Riboulet, CEO of a small French manufacturer, knows quite a bit about.

FEATURE ARTICLE - Sometimes, introducing lean thinking in an organization can make you feel lonely and hopeless. This article, which draws on the author's experience working with a chain of supermarkets in Siberia, offers some tips on what to do to start off a lean transformation.

OPINION – Managers and investors are starting to understand that, in the long term, a company's success is built on value for the customer and not on marketing manipulations.

INTERVIEW – Planet Lean speaks with telecommunications company Telefónica about the organization's attempt to apply lean startup principles in its R&D department.

RESEARCH – Every advocate of lean with a skeptical boss has been asked “What’s the ROI of lean?” at least once. This landmark article explains that lean can indeed help us to achieve a superior ROI, so long as we view it as an all-encompassing strategy rather than a simple tactic.

FEATURE – Starting off a lean journey is no easy feat, and existing models won’t tell you what the next steps are. That’s why you should go back to basics and let the Toyota Production System “house” from the mid-1980s show you the way.

FEATURE – Day after day, groundbreaking technological advances are dramatically changing industry. It is clear that we are now experiencing a new industrial revolution, but what’s the role of lean thinking in this Digital Age?

RESEARCH – A recent report by the National Audit Office looks at what works and what doesn’t when lean management is applied in UK government organizations.

WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – If truly embraced, lean thinking sustains and (in the long run) even creates jobs, but if a transformation is to last these jobs must be “good,” says Jim Womack.

INTERVIEW – When we think of innovation we rarely think of government, and yet the public sector is in desperate need to modernize and improve. Pierre Pezziardi is on a mission to bring innovation to the French government.

PROFILE – In this new section, Planet Lean features some of the most inspirational lean leaders out there. For the first profile, we have selected James Hereford, a former high school teacher who is now leading his third healthcare transformation.

COLUMN – Digitalization is now on the agenda of executive teams and is encouraging organizations to review their business models. But how does IT fit into the picture? What is its role? How can lean help?

FEATURE ARTICLE – By adopting lean thinking and establishing a dedicated care pathway, a Brazilian hospital has been able to drastically reduce the time breast cancer patients have to wait to undergo surgery or start treatment.

INTERVIEW – At the recent European Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, we sat down with Helen Zak for a few minutes to discuss the state of change in the healthcare sector.

INTERVIEW – At the recent Lean IT Summit, Planet Lean spoke to BlaBlaCar, a Paris-based company that has managed to keep the startup way of thinking alive in the face of the hypergrowth it experienced in the past four years.

RESEARCH – This insightful paper explains how the Irish government is encouraging organizations to adopt lean thinking to improve their competitiveness with the Lean Business Offer.

WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – On October 10, 1990 the book that introduced lean thinking to the world was published. Twenty-five years after Machine, one of the authors reflects on what the lean movement has achieved and on what is slowing it down.

CASE STUDY – An entire restaurant chain going lean is not something you see every day. Coming all the way from China, Xibei's story of cultural change will inspire you to never forget the fundamentals of lean, from standardization to quality.

VIDEO CASE STUDY – In the past couple of years, the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf has been able to leverage the commitment of its people to perform a lean turnaround. Its story shows you don’t need lots of resources and money to do lean in a hospital.

FEATURE – If we see lean thinking as a paradigm, which we do, then we should be able to define a set of values this paradigm is built on. So, are there lean ethics? Michael Ballé identifies 10 undisputed lean values, plus one.

CASE STUDY - A pioneering school in Rogaland, Norway, is proving that some elements of lean thinking can successfully be adapted to the education system to create better conditions for both teaching and learning.

FEATURE – Over the course of his career in the wind energy industry, the author has learned the power of horizontal integration in the improvement of organizations. In this piece, he shares his experience as a lean practitioner and leader at Ecotècnia.

OPINION – When thinking about Barcelona, most of us think of Gaudí’s architecture, tapas and beach weather, but the Catalonian capital might also be a worthy example of lean principles applied to city management.

WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The Volkswagen “defeat device” scandal is the latest example of a company that has chosen to focus on growth rather than the customer. What can we learn from this, and what should we do when such a shift takes place?

FEATURE – You don’t always need a lot of external help to initiate a lean transformation: the experience of the Emergency Department of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona shows it can be done with very little support from the outside.

FEATURE - Stressed and overwhelmed by workload? Once again, lean thinking comes to the rescue, offering us a way to approach our work that helps us eliminate waste, save time, and avert breakdowns.

FEATURE - Traditionally seen as the mother of all evil, the IT department in our organizations has a long way to go before it fulfils its potential and becomes an actual facilitator in the delivery of excellent products and services. In the past few years, IT leaders have realized that lean management can help them to transform the function.

FEATURE – By offering an alternative approach to management, lean thinking has disrupted the business world in the past three decades. But in what way has it really innovated?

COLUMN - Menlo Innovations may not define itself as a "lean organization" but there is no doubt that its management style is akin to the principles lean teaches. Here, a front-line Menlonian shares her thoughts on the company's culture.

FEATURE – For the last article of their series, the authors ask themselves the ultimate question: who wins at lean, and who loses? What makes change sustainable? Turns out, it’s all about the fundamentals.

FEATURE ARTICLE - It is always fascinating to learn about the evolution of lean in other countries. This piece gives us the lowdown on the state of lean in Russia, a late adopter where interest is now growing fast in all sectors, from government to agriculture.

FEATURE – In this article, Joakim Hillberg shares his experience teaching trainers how to run lean games and some hints on how to practically and effectively coach game participants.

FEATURE – The theory of hoshin kanri is clear, but how can you adapt it to a government organization structured in departments where making A3s is not a daily practice? A Dutch ministry shares its experience.

WOMACK’S YOKOTEN – The sharing economy came with a very “lean” promise – underutilized resources made available to those who need them for a reasonable fee – but not all that glitters is gold.

ARTICLE – In her second piece for PL, Frances Steinberg returns to the topic of working more effectively with people and the importance of going beyond the structured approach of kata familiar to so many of us.

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.

INTERVIEW – PL sits down with a consultant and a manager from the St Elisabeth hospital in the Netherlands to talk about the organization’s “loving care” approach to treating patients.

FEATURE – Until “check” and “act” become a natural part of daily work, we will always need formal audits to keep people focused and to sustain results. Here’s a few tips to make them work.

FEATURE – This piece analyzes the different elements of scrum, an agile software development framework, as seen from the point of view of traditional lean thinking.

VIDEO – Meetings are critical to create a culture based on teamwork and to establish a learning organization, but their traditional format tends to encourage individual agendas. Not Lean Coffee… 

COLUMN – To develop a successful product or service an organization has to effectively manage the tension between the experts' specialization and the entrepreneur's flexible approach to innovation.

WOMACK’S YOKOTEN - When managed poorly and tied to the wrong performance metrics, financial rewards can seriously damage your organization, Jim Womack warns in his latest column.

FEATURE - No matter how hard you try to convince them about lean, some people stay stubborn, aggressive and helpless. So instead of pushing your way onto them, have them pull the appropriate responses from you.

INTERVIEW – During a chat with Planet Lean, Darril Wilburn explains why courage and humility are necessary elements to establish a culture based on continuous improvement.

CASE STUDY – A very lean system that runs like clockwork and constant attention to customer service enable Barcelona-based 365.café to achieve the impossible: supplying 55 bakeries out of a 650-sqm factory.

INTERVIEW – How many times have you been asked, “What is the ROI of lean?” Jean Cunningham provides her insight to help you measure the financial impact of your lean improvements.

FEATURE – Most organizations rely on the support of lean consultants to bring their transformations forward, but how can they make the most of their expertise and knowledge?

CASE STUDY - HM Courts & Tribunals Service has been using lean ways of working for over six years, learning many lessons along the way and achieving some fantastic wins.

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.

ARTICLE – While supporting the adoption of lean in a Mozambican hospital, a young engineer learned a number of valuable lessons on leadership and what it really takes to help developing countries to grow.

WOMACK'S YOKOTEN - Senior leadership must learn to understand the work if they are to move away from the mindless metrics that lead managers to "game" numbers or to shift responsibility on to other departments.