By Pascal Dennis (bio) The Toyota Production System (TPA, aka ‘Lean’) is perhaps the world’s most powerful management system. Many people (including the Lean Pathways team & I) have dedicated themselves to learning & practicing its methods & mindsets, and to unlocking its mysteries. Practiced diligently TPS provides a bountiful harvest. Like all great systems, TPS can be all-encompassing. It can absorb practitioners to such an extent that we can lose sight of the most important things. Such as why are we practising TPS/Lean? What’s our Purpose? Strong companies & people ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) "Every day a little up…” an esteemed sensei taught me. Doing so entails focusing your energy of the critical few improvement areas. What will we emphasize in 2025? What's holding us back? What's the root cause of each obstacle? What are the countermeasures? Strategy is all about emphasis. Failure modes are daunting. Here are some: Not understanding our current condition - hence, our remedies are ineffectual Not understanding root causes & jumping to countermeasures Not confirming cause & effect, before embarking on a difficult set of countermeasures Tryi ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) Hubris is the ancient Greek word for arrogance, excessive pride or self-confidence. Hubris is a common root cause of unethical behavior and, arguably, the most dangerous enemy of great companies. (Check out this fine book on hubris and the Enron catastrophe entitled The Smartest Guys in the Room.) What's the countermeasure to hubris? Humility -- the extreme awareness of limits, of standards, of all that we are not. Humility is one of the Great Virtues, and underlies Prudence, Temperance, Courage and Justice. Justice, for example, is only possible if we’re humble ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) The past several blogs we've looked at how to improve the Jury Selection process: 1. Jury Panel Selection --> 2. Jury Selection --> 3. Court Case Our purpose is to increase flow and reduce overall cycle time. In other words, jurors get picked quicker, and court cases get processed quicker. What can muck up the process? Last blog we inferred an important root cause: poor visual management. Today we'll look to Little's Law for more insight: Lead Time = Loading/Capacity To reduce Lead Time we'd need to either: Increase capacity, or Reduce loading How might ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) Over the years, our Lean Pathways team has had the pleasure of working with software developers – a fun, capable and creative group. For some years now, the software world has been using the Agile methodology to increase throughput while reducing defects and lead time. In my experience, Agile and the Toyota Production System (TPS) are entirely simpatico. In fact, it seems clear to me that Agile is a child (or perhaps grandchild) of TPS. Core TPS principles and methodologies like visual management, team huddles (scrums), rapid experimentation and total involvement ar ..read more

By Pascal Dennis I owe this gem to our friends & colleagues in the great state of Alabama. Our partners there have a way with words, and a fine appreciation of Lean fundamentals. Lean is ‘simple’, is it not? Define Purpose clearly Make problems visible at all levels Treat people with respect – team members, customers, suppliers and the community Involve everybody In problem solving Lean methods like visual management, standardized work, Help Chains and the like are about making problems visible, so we can fix them. Once the problem is visible, the countermeasure is often obvious, n ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) Big Company Disease has many causes. One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle. Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented: Group A develops the Plan, Group B deploys, Group C checks the Plan, and Group D adjusts it. I call this Scatter, with a deep bow to the late, great Al Ward – friend, colleague & profound Lean thinker. Al described this syndrome to me over lunch a decade ago, and then again in his splendid book Lean Product & Process Design. Improvement, whether a Kaizen Workshop, Problem Solvi ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) One of my revered senseis always talked about Big Heart. The biggest weakness in contemporary business culture is an absence of heart. The scandals of the past decades – Enron, Wall Street, Madoff, McKinsey-Gupta and the like reflect it. In each case, the villains were ‘achievatrons’ at the trough, stuffing themselves at the expense of the public. Often, something darker than greed is at play. Do people like Madoff believe they was somehow above the law, and immune to the rules that govern the rest of us? By contrast, my sensei spent hours teaching my chums and I ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) My last blog (“Beware Prizes, Belts & Self-Appointed Experts”), begs the above question. What indeed is a sensei? You’ll have heard the most common definitions: teacher, mentor, ‘one who has gone before’, and these are all fine. I’d like to illuminate elements of the sensei mindset, at least in so far as I’ve observed & understood. Humility is perhaps its most important element, a sense of the vastness of reality, and the finite nature of human experience. How can anybody who understands this be full of themselves? W. Edwards Deming was famous for excoriatin ..read more

By Pascal Dennis (bio) I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Sir Isaac Newton Indeed, who cares if Joe Schmoe is a Master Lean Sensei (MLS) and a Super-Duper Advanced Black Belt (SDABB)? Or if Questionable Financial has received the Mortimer Snerd Prize for RGQ (Really Great Quality)? Ever known a chest-thumper who is also a sensei? What happens to ..read more