Tag: Kaizen

When I was a graduate student at the MIT Leaders for Global Operations program, one of our visiting professors was Don Ephlin, a former...

When I was in England on vacation recently, I saw this column in the Financial Times: Listen to your employees and so increase their productivity And...

I watched the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" for a second time. The film focuses mainly on Jiro Ono, a now 90-year old sushi chef in Tokyo who has received the rare and coveted Michelin 3-star rating for his restaurant. The film reminds me of Lean thinking, especially the drive for Kaizen, or continuous improvement.

I was fortunate to take a nearly two-week vacation recently, a trip that included a week in France. My wife and I had a chance...

Last year, I wrote a blog post about the intersection of two things I like a lot: Kaizen and whiskey: "Why Kaizen is an...

You might remember the hubbub (a kerfuffle?) over the NEJM opinion piece written by Dr. Jerome Groopman and Dr. Pamela Hartzband. See my first post...

As I occasionally do, I've written blog post for KaiNexus: For the Want of a System Better Than a Sticky Note, a Car Sale Was...

One thing I enjoy is the opportunity to basically be a “value adding” worker in a process. The work is pretty repetitive (but, again, it’s a very enjoyable environment) and it lets me think like an industrial engineer or a “Lean thinker” when I’m not talking with...

I've written a lot about suggestion boxes, and usually in the context of how they don't work well. Many aspects of traditional suggestion box systems sound great, but don't work in practice. What doesn't work: Boxes not being opened very often, being reviewed by a committee or executives...

The BBC radio program "The Science Hour" recently aired a program with a segment where an unexpected person (Dr. Kevin Fong) to an unexpected...

Thanks to Arena Simulation Software for asking me to write this article for their regular customer newsletter: "Testing Lean Changes, Small or Large" The article is...

I don't get the whole Pokémon thing. But how does the wildly popular Pokémon Go game make me thing of Lean and Kaizen - leaders need to get out of their offices, go out and search for improvement opportunities! Gotta catch 'em all! ...