INTERVIEW – Ahead of the Lean Global Connection 2024, we hear from Kruk S.A. in Poland to learn how they leveraged “centres of excellence” to break down company silos.
INTERVIEW - Faced with the difficulties of a project that didn't go as planned, this Finnish telcom turned to Lean Thinking. Ahead of their presentations at the LGC 2024, they tell us about their journey and how Kata became instrumental to their transformation.
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 – To bring consistency to the service provided to customers across their network of workshops, this Brazilian company has turned to Lean Thinking. Along the way, they found in it a different approach to leadership.
WEB SERIES – In the second episode of our docuseries on lean in Chile, we learn how, with a clear purpose and strong commitment from leadership, SKC is transforming its processes and mindset and building a competitive advantage.
CASE STUDY – This 104-year-old Chilean provider of integral solutions for the mining industry has turned to hoshin kanri to effectively connect everyone’s work with the overall business strategy.
CASE STUDY – By building Lean Thinking into its processes and culture and developing people’s capabilities, this Norwegian company serving the oil&gas sector achieved fantastic results.
FEATURE – The Sourcing team at insurance company SulAmérica tells us about how they were able to transform the process in their department in order to become more efficient in dealing with their workload.
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.
CASE STUDY – This Polish debt collection company is refocusing its work around true customer needs and increasing problem visibility by implementing hoshin kanri.
INTERVIEW – A 22-people veterinarian hospital in Barcelona has recently turned to lean thinking. We caught up with the owner to learn how things have changed six months into the journey.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – This French company provides support to the severely disabled, and is currently using lean thinking to limit employee turnover and recruit faster.
CASE STUDY – The transfer of a patient from one care setting to another is a delicate time. Insurance company SulAmérica has used its extensive lean experience to improve transitional care, and here’s how they did it.
FEATURE – At a recent Lean Day, our editor was reminded of the immense potential of Lean Thinking applied to government. After a few sleepy years, is lean in the public administration having a comeback?
FEATURE – What does it take to support a lean transformation from within? The author reflects on the role of the lean team in the turnaround of Brazilian insurance company SulAmérica.
CASE STUDY – Over the past few years, DBS Bank in Singapore has undergone an extraordinary turnaround inspired by lean. Here, the COO explains how the company has become the world's "best digital bank".
INTERVIEW – Earlier this month, we attended a Lean Day at Dreamplace Hotels and Resorts in the Canary Islands. We sat down with two lean leaders to discuss the transformations of their businesses.
INTERVIEW – Today’s story takes us to Iceland, where a senior leader in a utility company introduced cellular thinking to her team in a bid to improve flexibility and better working conditions.
INTERVIEW – What skills do coaches need to successfully support lean transformations in the service sector? Our colleagues from Australia tells us about their experience.
INTERVIEW – Three hotel directors from the same chain in the Canary Islands give us the lowdown on the company’s strategy to facilitate the transfer of lean knowledge from one location to another.
FEATURE – Dreamplace Hotels in Tenerife have been on an improvement journey for several years, but only recently did they find a way to truly become a learning organization: lean thinking.
CASE STUDY – How do you keep up with a market changing at the speed of light? The Chief Inventor of an Australian digital company explains how they are using lean to safeguard their future.
FEATURE – This story from Cape Town car dealership Halfway Ottery shows just how much eliminating stock can contribute to turning around a business by freeing up cash.
CASE STUDY – This Shared Service Center in Poland has leveraged lean, technology, and automation to completely transform itself and provide an ever-better customer experience.
CASE STUDY – The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the application of Virtual Healthcare across the world. In South Australia, this has been implemented in urgent care.
INTERVIEW – This metalworking company based in Poland has leveraged the cultural change brought by Lean Thinking to significantly improve its processes. Ahead of his presentation at the LGC, their lean manager tells us how they did it.
INTERVIEW – General Electric’s Angie Norman talks to our editor about the lean journey of the company’s Finance department and how the area became a driver of GE’s overall transformation.
FEATURE – Fourteen months after the beginning of the pandemic, the author reflects on the challenges and opportunities that remote working has brought to this insurance company.
CASE STUDY – This insurtech venture has found in Lean Thinking a way to tackle its many scaling issues. It’s grown from two to fifty-five people in less than four years, ultimately thanks to a strong focus on quality.
CASE STUDY – The Finnish Broadcasting Company has been leveraging lean thinking to scale up its agile work. In the process, it has developed a greater understanding of customer value.
FEATURE – With lean thinking, Madrid-based Neo@Ogilvy is hoping to create a stronger connection with customers, thus learning to create value for them and redefining the overall purpose of marketing.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA - We follow the author on a visit to a train maintenance center in France. Through practical examples and pictures from the gemba, she explains how the center is transforming itself.
FEATURE – A leader’s creativity and care for her people can lead to extraordinary results even in the most challenging of environments. As the latest LGN book comes out, the author reflects on one of the most impressive lean transformations you will come across.
FEATURE – Hansei is a powerful tool that helps us understand Lean Thinking and advance on our journey. The author shares the lessons he learned from the struggles Halfway Toyota encountered during its years-long transformation.
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 – No organization can expect to survive without a sound marketing strategy. The author outlines the main elements and advantages of a lean marketing approach.
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – This week, the author chats with an innovative insurance company as it relies on its lean learnings to ensure business continuity and switch to remote working during the Covid-19 crisis.
FEATURE – It is a common misconception that our work is too unpredictable to fit into a standardized approach. The author debunks this myth.
CASE STUDY – A boutique law firm in Milan has initiated a lean transformation to turn around its processes, improve service to its clients and make life easier for the team.
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 – What a Brazilian bank has learned from its first few steps in adopting hoshin kanri through structured problem solving and people development.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – After re-insourcing its bike repair workshop, a distribution center of France's La Poste has begun to recover long-lost knowledge about the work of mailmen and using it to innovate.
FEATURE – The lean mindset Legal Sea Foods has developed is allowing the company to run bold, aggressive experiments that might some day reinvent the way their restaurant kitchens work.
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.
INTERVIEW – We have come to dread having to interact with customer support representatives, and quite rightly so. Basecamp has made it a mission to bring humanity back to this interaction.
FEATURE – The role of the coach in a lean transformation is an often-debated topic. The author discusses his experience building the architecture of the Halfway turnaround.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – In the web marketing world, a competitive advantage is a matter of life and death for businesses. The author meets a firm that has been leveraging lean to gain one.
INTERVIEW – With the closure of Toyota’s operations in Altona, the land Down Under is left without its lean poster child. Alister Lee tells us who the community there should look to next.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In this video, a shop coordinator explains how the 365 bakeries were able to speed up service to customers and ensure product quality by reorganizing work and responsibilities.
THE LEAN BAKERY - For the past decade, lean has fuelled the growth of a chain of cafes/bakeries in Barcelona. With 100 now open, the Retail Manager explains how lean helps them manage a booming business.
FEATURE – Riverview Gardens in an NGO striving to build prosperity for the community around it through capability development. The authors suggest this should be the goal for the lean community as a whole.
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 – When market changes caused operational problems in their firm, two top managers decided to stick to lean thinking (and a set of specific practices) – learning to focus on what truly matters and letting their people embrace problem-solving.
INTERVIEW – An American group of restaurants is experimenting with the application of lean thinking in its kitchens and dining areas. Planet Lean had a word with the chefs to see what’s cooking.
INTERVIEW - Having to adapt to changing customer needs, KLM Catering Services decided to turn to lean thinking, reducing its changeover times and recycling more.
DOCUMENTARY – In PL’s first ever documentary, we share the story of a chain of car dealerships in Africa. Watch and learn how people development and lean leadership made for one of the best turnarounds you’ll ever encounter.
FEATURE – For the first article in our series on the Halfway transformation, we asked the Sales team to tell us about how they apply lean to selling cars in a challenging social context.
FEATURE – An approach based on coaching and experiments is transforming the way restaurant chain Xibei works with its people to improve service and dishes: the story of Chef Liang and his Kongfu fish.
FEATURE – The many benefits of 5S are well known, but few people realize the positive impact the technique can have on our environmental performance, says our lean and green correspondent after visiting Tokheim Italia.
INTERVIEW – The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) has been working with a lean-inspired improvement program that is gradually transforming the culture of the business – one creative idea at a time.
CASE STUDY – The story of how a humble leader, who recognizes the importance and contribution of each individual to the company’s success, is making a car dealership in Botswana a fantastic example of lean transformation.
FEATURE – A Dutch company that maintains and overhauls train bogies has realized that in order for lean to work, a focus on continuous learning must be established. Here is how they are trying to get there.
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.
INTERVIEW – Lean for social good may sound new to many, but to the CEO of one of America’s largest food banks, the partnership between her organization and Toyota to defeat hunger in the Big Apple seems just natural.
ARTICLE – The Institut de Medicina Legal de Catalunya has learned that employee engagement and lean thinking can shake up even the stiffest of the public sector's working environments.
VIDEO INTERVIEW – This hotel in the Canary Islands is bringing lean to its Kitchen Department, hoping to streamline the process and provide a better service to diners.
CASE STUDY – By leveraging Daily Management (DM), Supergasbras was able to change its trajectory and add more value to the customer in a critical sector for society.
WEB SERIES – Episode 3 of our docuseries on lean in Brazil takes us to the second largest bank in the country. Learn how Bradesco is striving to improve its processes to provide more value to its customers using Lean Thinking.
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.
CASE STUDY – This transport and logistics company in Colombia has turned to Lean Thinking to become more adaptive and ensure an easier post-acquisition integration of new cultures.
INTERVIEW – Juan Pedro Gonzalez is a pioneer of lean in hospitality, having spearheaded the transformation of Spain’s Dreamplace hotels since the beginning. Here, he discusses what role lean can play in advancing the industry.
CASE STUDY – Hotels of the Palladium Group are implementing Lean Thinking in their housekeeping departments to improve efficiency and service quality.
CASE STUDY – A Chilean company selling and servicing vehicles and equipment for a variety of industries has made of humility the leading trait of its cultural transformation, with great results.
FEATURE – A former ops manager now tasked for improvement across IKEA looks back at what she learned in one of the company’s stores and explains how she hopes to take lean to the whole group.
FEATURE – To consistently identify new and better ways of doing things can breathe new life into a lean journey, but only if the knowledge developed can be effectively shared across the organization.
FEATURE – This global designer and manufacturer has leveraged a remote kaizen initiative to keep the flame of continuous improvement burning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
FEATURE – Sharon Visser shares her leader’s standard work from when she ran the Ngami car dealership and encourages us to use what we see at gemba to shape our own.
FEATURE - The author explains how a recent book on radical quality improvement in manufacturing inspired him to initiate similar experiments in his software development firm.
FEATURE – This article explains how Lean Thinking and the agile method can strengthen and optimize our digital transformation efforts.
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.
CASE STUDY – The reimbursement department of the largest independent insurance company in Brazil has brought together lean and digitalization to improve its service to customers.
FEATURE – As she packs before leaving Botswana, the author tells us of a wonderful example of Lean Thinking that resurfaced from her past working in the Botswana tourism industry.
FEATURE – To make the right decisions, the contribution of the team and the leader’s intuition are not enough. It’s also critical to identify the most effective channels and activities for your marketing activities.
FEATURE – A lean retail experiment: Carrefour Group in Brazil has started a lean journey to rapidly adapt to market changes and reach excellence in the delivery of value to customers.
CASE STUDY – How does a small food shop in Sichuan turn into a $30 billion chain with around 900 restaurants in several countries? By always going the extra mile for customers!
FEATURE – Using lean marketing principles, an entrepreneur in southern Italy was able to pivot from a potentially bad investment and create a unique customer experience instead.
FEATURE – This story of a lean application in elderly care in a Norwegian borough demonstrates the great strides that can be made in providing better service to citizens if their needs become the focus of the work.
FEATURE – This article analyzes some of the most effective tools lean practitioners can deploy to design solid processes characterized by an effective sequence of tasks and a focus on customer value.
FEATURE – To lean out a training organization means to both transform its internal processes and integrate Lean Thinking in its educational offering: the story of ZingTrain.
CASE STUDY – This hotel in Spain has been able to leverage Lean Thinking in its restaurant to successfully adapt to the new Covid-19 regulations enforced in the country, becoming more efficient along the way.
CASE STUDY – Not even a pandemic can prevent a lean organization from learning: this hotel in Tenerife has decided to make the most of its forced closure to review and improve its processes.
FEATURE – The restaurant business has always been tough, but Covid-19 is now presenting it with new challenges. The author shares a few lean practices that can help restaurants develop competitiveness.
CASE STUDY – The author, who leads the CI team in a large real estate company, discusses the lean transformation of the business and role of the improvement team in it.
FEATURE – To speed up the issuance of insurance policies, a SulAmérica department decided to move away from big batches and start working in flow.
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 simple lean tool can help us create safer flows in our businesses, a critical challenge as we plan our return to work with new physical distancing measures in place.
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – Throughout the lockdown, this car-selling business has never lost its focus on people development. The author learns how this approach is helping the firm make the most of the crisis.
FEATURE – A Dutch transmission system operator is using Lean Planning – built around the Last Planner System – to better manage its complex infrastructure projects.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – How do you kick off a lean journey? This French company has chosen to begin by analyzing and tackling each customer complaint.
