Basic Excellence

It's always a pleasure to see an article make it's own point... especially when it is contradictory to the premise of the article itself. Take…

A core aspect of lean is execution, fast execution. Ohno and Shingo often pushed their folks to just try new ideas and refine later instead of endless…

Remember those college days, a couple decades or more ago, when we visited the coin-op laundromat each week or so? It's been a while. But I still…

Those of us in the lean world know the power of visual controls to convey information, metrics, and methods. But can the design of the visual control…

John Hunter at Curious Cat has asked several of us to help co-host part of a larger scale Management Carnival Best of 2008 series where several blogge…

A good friend of mine, Dan Peters, sent me a link to one of the many articles emerging in the last 24 hours on Toyota’s 11 day shutdown of its domesti…

We've taken McKinsey to task several times over the past year, especially with regards to their "thinking" on supply chains. But last mo…

Note: Links to all of four Japan factory tour posts and the various lessons from those tours can be found here. While traveling to Japan a few days a…