FEATURE – Ahead of his presentation at next week’s Lean Global Connection, Jim Womack explains why Lean is made for a world in turmoil but urges us to strike a balance between immediate response and thorough understanding of the problem.
BOOK EXCERPT – These are the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1 of the new Lean Global Network book about applying Lean Thinking in a resort hotel.
FEATURE - Projects or programs? The authors discuss why Lean Thinking should go beyond piecemeal operational improvements, as a transformative strategy that balances today’s demands with future adaptiveness.
FEATURE – Taiwan-based Machan International Co. manufactures sheet metal products, tool storage and medical trolleys, and smart energy storage cabinets. Last year, they turned to lean to improve their product development process.
BOOK EXCERPT – In the introduction to his new book, Art Byrne reflects on his lean journey and explains why to understand lean one must change their mindset.
FEATURE – To successfully transform, we need to change our “theory of success”. The authors discuss the obstacles managers face along the way.
FEATURE - The Basic Thinking dimension of the Lean Transformation Framework is often the most neglected and the least understood. The author tries to shed a light on the subject.
FEATURE – How does the improvement department of a company become a hindrance to the transformation? The author answers this question and discusses how this can be avoided.
EVENT - The Lean Global Connection is around the corner! Our editor takes you through some of the key highlights you can expect and reminds us of the idea behind the largest online lean event in the world.
FEATURE - This surgery department was among the first areas in this hospital (maybe in the whole of Spain) to adopt Lean Thinking. Here's what their lean journey is focusing on more than 10 years after they started.
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.
INTERVIEW – Drawing on 33 years of experience working in product development at Caterpillar, the interviewee reflects on lean in engineering.
INTERVIEW – In this Q&A, the Chief of Transformation of oil and gas company TechnipFMC tells us about their experience implementing Lean Product and Process Development.
CASE STUDY – A people-centric approach to work, improvement, and the adoption of automation is allowing this Norwegian company to thrive in a changing industry and environment.
CASE STUDY – The turning point in this Colombian construction company’s transformation came when they started to embrace lean as a culture rather than just a set of tools.
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.
FEATURE – Following the recent CXO Summit in Singapore, a team from the Lean Global Network reflects on the partnership with SIT and its potential effects on the city-state.
CASE STUDY – This Polish debt collection company is refocusing its work around true customer needs and increasing problem visibility by implementing hoshin kanri.
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.
CASE STUDY – With plans to double capacity year on year in its new precision machining business, a Turkish company found in lean a way to control growth by stabilizing old processes while new ones are introduced.
CASE STUDY – With plans to double capacity year on year in its new precision machining business, a Turkish company found in lean a way to control growth by stabilizing old processes while new ones are introduced.
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".
WEB SERIES – In the fourth and final episode of Season 1 of our docuseries, we visit home improvement and gardening retailer Leroy Merlin and learn about their efforts to lean out their supply chain.
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.
VIDEO INTERVIEW – We recently caught up with John Shook at the Lean Healthcare Academic Conference in Stanford and asked him to share his thought on the questions we need to ask ourselves in a lean journey and on lean in turbulent times.
FEATURE – With one of the biggest lean events of the year just four days away, John Shook tells you why you should participate and what you can expect.
VIDEO INTERVIEW - In this conversation with our editor, John Shook discusses Lean Thinking post-pandemic and its role tackling large-scale problems, and introduces an upcoming free event you don't want to miss.
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 – Inventory reduction is critical to waste elimination. Yet, many are reluctant to do it, fearing demand variability and production instability will neutralize their efforts. Grupo Sabó's story proves otherwise.
INTERVIEW – In this Q&A, the CEO of a Ukrainian provider of equipment for stores shares how lean thinking has helped his company modernize its processes and engage its people.
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.
VIDEO INTERVIEW – Last year, the Lean Global Network launched an initiative to leverage the knowledge of our institutes to positively impact the healthcare industry. We caught up with the group in São Paulo this week.
FEATURE – PL readers will likely be familiar with IOV, the cancer clinic in Brazil that’s become a reference for lean healthcare for countless organizations. Here, Dr Fred looks back at IOV’s 15-year journey.
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 – In the face of uncertainty, when it’s hard to see the road ahead, we can still make things better day after day by embracing kaizen – until we are out of the woods.
FEATURE – We assume that what holds our transformations back is the lack of high-price resources, but more often than not it is the simplest of items.
FEATURE – Looking back on the lean journeys he's seen firsthand, the author concludes that a true lean transformation occurs when you establish lines of mentoring to the Thinking People System.
FEATURE – The lean house can be seen as a blueprint for a transformation. But what happens when CEO or other senior leaders are not aligned with the vision expressed in the roof?
FEATURE – This intimate account looks back at the time one of the authors spent working with Harada-san and how it shaped his career and encouraged him to spread TPS knowledge.
NOTES FROM THE (VIRTUAL) GEMBA – In the last of her series of virtual gemba walks, the author learns how a hospital in the Caribbean island of Martinique relied on Lean Thinking in its fight against the Coronavirus.
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.
INTERVIEW – This agro-industrial business in Colombia is applying lean thinking to its harvesting process. The harvest manager explains the difficulties and opportunities encountered on the journey so far.
FEATURE – The principal of the Halfway Ottery dealership explains how their lean culture based on respect and improvement is not only changing the business, but transforming the lives of people in the townships.
RESEARCH – What kind of financial results can a SME owner expect from a lean transformation? To find out, the author of this interesting research analyzed the performance of 100 Italian small and medium-sized companies.
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 - This set of guidelines will help you to understand how to properly structure your lean transformation, keeping into account the entire organization as it tries to embrace and manage change.
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 – SMEs represent the backbone of many economies, but few of them contemplate embarking on a lean transformation. The author discusses why and offers some tips to help them embrace lean.
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.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – Thanks to the effective application of Just-in-time and Jidoka, Thales LAS has managed to turn around its logistics department. Catherine Chabiron reports.
FEATURE – In business, the word “turnaround” refers to radical changes in the direction a company is moving toward. Here’s why Lean Thinking can increase the chances of success of such endeavors.
CASE STUDY – The implementation of lean in the internal logistics of a pharmaceutical company in Brazil proved key to increasing productivity and quality in the organization.
FEATURE – In this candid, personal account, the author shares her experience as a lean coach, her challenges and success, and how she adapts to different situations.
CASE STUDY – The story of this Norwegian window and door manufacturer shows how a deep and ongoing commitment to a lean transformation can help a company thrive against all odds.
FEATURE – The author discusses how the daily practice of lean thinking develops perseverance and the grit a leader needs to improve an organization.
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.
INTERVIEW – A former VP of Operations from Thales tells Catherine Chabiron how he and his team turned around their department by committing to lean thinking and focusing on people development every day.
ROUND-UP – As the year ends, our editor reflects on the state of the lean movement and looks back at the best articles published by Planet Lean this year.
CASE STUDY – This Turkish producer of sanitaryware has boosted its quality so dramatically it’s now a player in the German market. It did so by bringing drastic change to its production system.
FEATURE – How an amusement park in Norway is using lean visual management to support actors during their busy schedule and to give visitors an experience they will never forget.
FEATURE – The author, a lean leader from Germany, recounts his experience bringing lean change about and discusses what it takes to truly learn lean thinking.
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.
FEATURE – Enabling its people to think autonomously about problems and fostering collaboration among departments is allowing a French company that makes and installs playgrounds to thrive.
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.
CASE STUDY – The author looks back at the impressive lean transformation of the Hungarian plant of Coloplast, a Danish company offering medical devices and services.
FEATURE – Sometimes all you need to change minds is a successful experiment. This is how a Norwegian furniture manufacturer managed to transform the way it thinks about its sofa production.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the fourth episode in our video series, the CEO of 365 explains how lean showed him that his business could grow (exponentially) without using any extra resources.
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.
FEATURE – Organizations can only reap the full benefits of modern technologies if they pair up their digitalization efforts with an enterprise-wide lean transformation.
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.
ROUND-UP – Looking back at the year that just ended, our editor Roberto Priolo reflects on the power and reach of lean thinking, and offers us a round-up of the best content from 2017.
CASE STUDY – Over the past four years, by developing its kaizen capabilities and crafting a better approach to maintenance, a Turkish gold mine has significantly reduced its extraction costs.
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.
WOMACK'S YOKOTEN – Small firms represent the backbone of the economy, and there is no doubt lean can help them improve and grow – by making the jobs they offer great. Without it, countries won't be great either.
INTERVIEW – For the past year, agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere Ibérica has worked to spread lean thinking to the supply chain. We met with them in Madrid to understand how they’re going about it.
FEATURE – A lean journey often has more downs than ups, but it is a responsibility of management to persist and keep asking the right questions that will steer the firm in the right direction.
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.
FEATURE - In this essay, first appeared in his book Gemba Walks, Jim P. Womack describes the benefits of launching lean in a greenfield environment drawing from his experience volunteering in Central America.
FEATURE - We are often told that employee resistance to change is natural, but it’s really just the result of a wrong approach to lean thinking. Learn to effectively engage people and change will follow.
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 – Because each lean transformation is unique, we can't expect an off-the-shelf solution to work. The author discusses multi-dimensional transformations and how we can be flexible but also structured.
FEATURE – At Malamulele Onward in Johannesburg, a do-it-yourself lean transformation is increasing the impact the nonprofit organization is having on South African children living with cerebral palsy.
INTERVIEW – Does your company feel like a sand castle? Do you struggle to sustain lean results? At the recent Lean Transformation Summit, the CEO of Lantech told us how the firm is using daily management to prevent “deterioration”.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – This month, Catherine visits a metal injection moulding specialist and hears about the strong link between growing people’s capabilities with lean thinking and staying competitive in a complex market.
VIDEO – We constantly talk about the role of leadership, but perhaps we don't realize just how intertwined leadership transformation and business transformation really are. This short video discusses why.
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.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – On this gemba walk in the cardiology department of a Parisian hospital, the author discovers how the team is changing its internal dynamics and processes to make lean their way of thinking.
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.
CASE STUDY – There is more to Siena than the Palio: the Tuscan city boasts of one of the most advanced examples of lean healthcare in Italy. We asked the team at the University Hospital how they are doing it.
CASE STUDY – The whole of Helsinki’s hospital district is leaning out, with incredible results. It isn’t every day that we come across – let alone have the opportunity to observe – a lean transformation in such a large healthcare organization.
1 QUESTION, 5 ANSWERS – Lean management causes a huge shift in the mind of leaders, one that dramatically changes the way they think of themselves and the way they behave. We asked five leaders to tell us how lean changed them.
FEATURE – Too often we tend to focus on trying to replicate success, rather than analyze failure. Yet, learning from mistakes is a fundamental principle in lean. This account of a transformation gone south offers an insightful critique of lean.
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.
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 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.
