Posts tagged as:

Problem Solving

Are you working on the right problems?

05.17.2012

Lean is not all about waste, despite what we see in most definitions and applications. If it were about one thing (which oversimplifies things) it would be about problem solving, at all levels of the organization. We take problem solving for granted. Why? Because we’ve been doing it since we were very young. We learned [...]

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Building a Problem Solving Organization Presentation

05.15.2012

I want to thank Enterprise Minnesota and the Center for Business & Industry for hosting me during the Lean Enterprise Summit held today. The following are my slides from my talk on building a problem solving organization.    

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eBook published on A3 Problem Solving

02.14.2012

We are still very proud of our book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, that has done very well over the past few years. The book publishing world is changing, very rapidly. I’ve had one of the big publishers ask me about doing another book. I’m not ready for that yet. But it also begs the [...]

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Kodak and Fuji: a tale of two companies in the face of the same insurmountable problem

02.08.2012

The Economist had an excellent article detailing the difference between Kodak’s historic bankruptcy and Fujifilm’s equally remarkable success, in The last Kodak moment?, and expanded on in Sharper focus. Both companies faced the same problem statement: digital photography would replace film. But Eastman Kodak, founded in 1880, despite it’s major innovation capabilities and giant patent [...]

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The failure of “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!”

02.07.2012

I head this approach many times, and in many different forms. Managers say “I don’t want people to bring me problems; I want them to bring me solutions.” Or “I don’t want more questions, I want answers.” I ran across this on the Harvard Business Review Blog in The No Whining Rule for Managers by [...]

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Why won’t they tell me there is a problem?

01.24.2012

Leaders ask people to tell them what problems they have. This isn’t a practice exclusive to lean. MBWA, or Management By Walking Around, even incorporated this concept. In some organizations, there are systems in place (whether digital or on a board) for individuals to capture and surface problems. We ask as part of one-on-ones. But [...]

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Northeast Shingo Prize Keynote Presentation on Problem Solving

10.06.2011

The Northeast Shingo Prize recognizes business excellence regionally. They are established with the goal of making manufacturing facilities and other industries more competitive in the global marketplace, illustrating how world-class results can be achieved through the implementation of lean principles and techniques in core manufacturing and other business processes. This year I am giving the [...]

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Call firefighting and band-aids what they are – but do them in a structured way

09.19.2011

Sometimes, firefighting is the right answer. Once the fire is burning, whether figuratively or literally, you must put it out. There’s nothing wrong with this. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a reactive, firefighting organization in a structured way. What would you structure in this reactive mode? First, you would get a little definition [...]

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Why do we still use RE-training as a “solution” to problems so frequently?

08.17.2011

Through my coaching efforts with clients, I get to see a lot of problems and a lot of solutions. I’ve never tried to take the solutions as data and categorize them. If I did, I think the most common solution people try is… retraining. Not training, RE-training. As in AGAIN. Let’s think about this for [...]

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Leaning-out “dead wood” in a subcontractor-based business [Guest Post]

05.23.2011

Guest Post: Kurt Woolley is Lean Champion within Intel’s Fab/Sort Manufacturing (FSM) organization, and founder of Atmos Industries. See more on his LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kurt-woolley/3/941/575. Do lean methods apply within a subcontractor-based business? Oh yes! In my recent journeys, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a sub-contractor business – a millwork operation, making cabinets [...]

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