Posts tagged as:

standard work

Building Manager Standard Work

11.18.2011

My latest column for Industry Week, Lessons from the Road, titled “Building Manager Standard Work” has been posted. Here is an excerpt: …People resist building standards in knowledge work because of natural variation. Yet if you already have variation, why would you want to add more by having no structure or routine? No, you can’t [...]

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Slow and Steady, and Routine

01.24.2011

You haven’t gotten any sleep all week, so you try to get one night of 12 hours to make up for it all. It doesn’t work very well, does it? You haven’t worked out in a month, so you spend all day in the gym to make up for it. It doesn’t work, does it? [...]

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Matt Wrye’s Reflections from the Lean Experience

12.16.2010

At the moment, I am teaching a Lean Experience at our Center for a group of mixed companies that include retail, transportation, micro-brews, and more. Recently, we delivered a private session at the company where lean blogger Matt Wrye works. Matt converted several of his lessons from the class into blog posts. He decided to [...]

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Control Point Standardization as a form of “leader standard work”

11.18.2010

I recently recorded a podcast with Joe Dager of Business901. I’ve done a previous show with him on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. In this episode we cover Control Point Standardization after Joe read my recent Leading Lean column on the subject. Check out Joe’s website and my podcast with him here.

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First Steps Video: More Questions as Standard Work

10.04.2010

As promised each Monday morning I am posting a video that explores how someone can start the lean journey even if they are only willing to invest 15 minutes. This is the First Steps Video Series. Last week I talked about using standard questions as a form of standard work in your one-on-one meetings. I [...]

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Igor Stravinsky Agrees: Standards Enable Creativity

08.06.2010

This week I’ve been commenting on things I’ve found on the web. Often, they are posts I’ve saved in my blog reader Gruml (which by the way is a fantastic Google Reader desktop app if you are a Mac user). I’ve always enjoyed Jon Miller’s posts on Gemba Panta Rei. This is a post that [...]

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To Standardize, or to Not?

11.19.2009

A frequent question that I get is how far to take standardization. This is particularly true for multiple locations. Then the question becomes how far do you go to standardize from site to site. As with anything, to key to avoid getting lost in questions like this is to get and remain clear on the [...]

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Going to a Job Interview?

11.10.2009

Did you lose you job? Were you anticipating doing so? Are you just looking for a better opportunity? I don’t think it will surprise anyone to know that in 2009 I had more people I know looking for a job than ever before. The list got so long that I had to write it down [...]

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