The Postal Service Forgets the Customer
12 March 2013
A recent CNN article pretty much describes the problem at the US Postal Service, although that wasn't really its intent. You see, there's this…
The Perils of Waterless Progress
27 June 2010
Just in time for a slow Sunday comes a story via one of my favorite e-zines, Reason, telling us about the problems that progress sometimes faces. Even…
Zappos and the Fallacy of Best Practices
31 January 2010
By Kevin Meyer Companies love to spend gobs of money going on treasure hunts to find new best practices. Tours of great companies, workshops by supp…
Daydreaming Lean
29 June 2009
Understanding lean manufacturing is often a difficult undertaking due to how counterintuitive it can be. How can a process yield more with less? Move…
A Violinist in the Bronx
23 May 2008
Last evening, on one of those rare occasions where I was forced to watch TV, I was flipping through the channels and came across CNBC's The Big Id…
Featuritis Curse
16 April 2008
I've really been enjoying my new Apple MacBook. Why didn't I switch earlier? The TV ad is true: everything... just works. Yesterday I found an…
Oh Give Me a Break (TM)
14 May 2007
And now for the most ridiculous item of the day... The U.S. Patent Office approved the trademark "Lean Procurement(TM)," a strategic servic…
Finding Time To Innovate
19 January 2007
Our occasional guest author Dan Markovitz has an article in the latest Industry Week titled Get Lean Get Innovative where he discusses a common proble…