I’m happy to be hosting a webinar that will be presented by Stephanie Hill from KaiNexus, on December 5th at 1 pm. It’s titled: You can register to attend live, ask questions, and interact with Stephanie. I recently recorded a preview with Stephanie, which you can watch or read about below: Watch the Preview: REGISTER NOW Transcript: Mark Graban: This continuous improvement podcast. I’m Mark Graban, a senior advisor with KaiNexus, and we’re joined today by Stephanie Hill. She is a senior lean strategist at KaiNexus. We’re going to be talking about and getting a preview of her upcoming webin ..read more

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guests for Episode #493 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Gene Kim and Steve Spear, co-authors of the new book Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification. Joining us for the first time is Gene Kim, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author and researcher who has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 – He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author of six books, The Unicorn Project (2019), and co ..read more

Lean is a lot of problem solving. Toyota excels at such problem solving, and they have developed their practical problem solving (PPS) approach. For many it is surprising how much time Toyota spends on defining and understanding the problem, whereas (many in) the rest of the world immediately jump to a (possibly inferior) solution. Let me go through the process step by step. The Framework: PDCA The overarching framework for the Toyota problem-solving process is, of course, PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act). This is, in my view, one of the cornerstones of lean manufacturing and is essential for ..read more

Special pricing this week only! My latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, is on sale: $9.99 paperback (regularly $18.99) $19.99 paperback (regularly $28.99) $3.99 Kindle (regularly $6.99) The sale price should be available through Friday. It’s an award winner! Enter to Win Enter to win a signed copy, along with five other signed books! What do you think? Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Or please share the post with your thoughts on LinkedIn. Don’t want to miss a post or podcast? Subscribe to get notified about posts via em ..read more

I was recently interviewed by Megan Wallin-Kirth for an article she wrote for Quality Digest. I thought she was interviewing me for a broader article about quality, but it ended up being a profile of me and my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. So I’m happy about how that turned out. Or, how mistakes factor into a kaizen mindset And I might have forgotten to share this article that I wrote for Quality Digest back in September… yes, it’s an intentionally provocative title, but I stand by what I wrote and I think there’s a serious point ..read more

I have a limited number of copies of my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More that are available for about half of the Amazon retail price — and this includes free shipping. CLICK TO BUY There’s a small misprinting on the cover, where the subtitle almost runs off the right edge of the book (as shown in the image above). But the interior of the book is completely fine. You’ll get a signed copy sent to you for just $19.99 (and this currently sells for $38.99 on Amazon). It’s a 240-page full-color book. I hope it brings you and your team a lot of value! CLICK TO BUY Wh ..read more

In the quest for organizational excellence, many companies turn to established frameworks and philosophies to guide their journey. Among the prominent ones are the Agile Manifesto, Deming’s 14 Principles, and the Toyota Production System. Each of these frameworks offers unique insights into achieving operational excellence, customer satisfaction, and continuous improvement. By exploring the core elements of these frameworks, we can distill a set of simplified guiding principles that encapsulate the essence of organizational excellence. Customer-Centricity The first touchstone of any organizat ..read more

This week’s guest is Brent Weichers. Ron and Brent discussed the different kinds of motivation, presenting data to a non-technical audience, and more. An MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here. In this episode you’ll learn:  Brent’s favorite quote (3:10) Presenting data to a non-technical audience (6:37) What he’s been learning at workshops (10:06) Balancing extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (13:29) Stories from working with trainers (19:58) How his approach is different or similar (28:17) His plans for 2024 (36:54) Podcast Resources Get All the Latest News f ..read more

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #492 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Nick Katko, previously here in Episode 428 in 2021 with his co-author Mike DeLuca talking about their book Practicing Lean Accounting.  Today, Nick is here to discuss his book, The Lean CFO: Architect of the Lean Management Accounting System — now in its second edition — released back in February. Nick also did a webinar earlier this year as part of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement webinar series. For over 20 years, Nick has worked at BMA, assisting clients in Lea ..read more

Overburden (muri) is one of the three evils of manufacturing, along with unevenness (mura) and waste (muda). Out of the three, overburden is probably the least understood. Hence, in this post I will look deeper at overburden, including plenty of examples as well as the effects of overburden on your people. Introduction There are three evils that every factory has to fight: waste (muda), unevenness (mura), and overburden (muri). I have written about them before. Normally, the focus of many companies is on waste, since it is the easiest of the three to address. However, unevenness is more signi ..read more