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First a little housekeeping: We have moved The Old Lean Dude blog to a new platform. If you received this post in your inbox this morning, there is nothing for you to do and we apologize that your receiving it twice. If you did not and you wish to continue to do so in the future, please resubscribe your email here. Thank you. This post is a prequel to another from June 2023, which recounted the very first Shingo Prize award ceremony – 35 years ago.    Attending this year’s Shingo Conference in Provo, I discovered that I was the only person in attendance that was actually at the ..read more

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Last month marked the 35th anniversary of the Shingo Prize, an award bestowed each year to recognize organizations that demonstrate the principles and methods espoused by its namesake, Shigeo Shingo.   While I haven’t made it to every annual celebration and award ceremony, it turns out that I was the only person at this year’s gala who actually attended the very first award ceremony back in 1989.  So, I’ll memorialize here, as best as I can recall.  (Today’s post is Part 1.  I’ll follow up with Part 2 next week.) It seems important to me to remember the beginnings of a ..read more

There’s a certain irony for me in the attention given recently to the application of robots on the shop floor.  On a couple occasions in the past year, I’ve heard manufacturing colleagues talk about the benefits of deploying robots to handle material conveyance.  “Better,” they say, “to redeploy humans to value-adding jobs where human capability and creativity can benefit the customer.”  Given the persistent labor shortage, I get the benefit of filling open job slots.  What’s confounding to me is the tendency to ascribe terms like value-adding and non-value-adding (NVA ..read more

I responded recently to a LinkedIn post regarding AI-assisted robotic recycling.  The sorting speed is so fast, we almost miss each sort in the blink of an eye.  Having observed this same activity attempted by humans —  and overlooking the upstream potential to avoid this kind of recycling mess at the source (the wasteful consumer) — I’m all over the potential to pass off these kinds of tasks to machines.  Humans doing this work must operate at a much slower pace, risk injury, and are not so precise as the AI robot.   And of course, humans must also deal with the ..read more

With GBMP’s 18th Annual Northeast Lean Conference on the horizon, I’m reflecting on our theme, “Amplifying Lean – The Collaboration Effect.”   The term ‘collaboration’ typically connotes an organized attempt by unrelated, even competitive, parties to work together on a common problem; for example, the NUMMI collaboration between GM and Toyota or the international space station.   In a sense, these types of organized collaboration are analogs to Kaizen events and significant organizational breakthrough improvement.    Being a longtime proponent of ‘everybody everyd ..read more

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  This advice, attributed to Nicolo Machiavelli, and later cited by Winston Churchill at the conclusion of WWII, resonates once again in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Widespread shortages of products, services, raw materials, fuel, equipment, transportation and people have shocked the system in our land of plenty, creating an almost universal burning platform. From manufacturing to healthcare to service and even the public sector, providers can’t deliver – this while costs are rising, unemployment is at record lows and customer d ..read more

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  This advice, attributed to Nicolo Machiavelli, and later cited by Winston Churchill at the conclusion of WWII, resonates once again in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Widespread shortages of products, services, raw materials, fuel, equipment, transportation and people have shocked the system in our land of plenty, creating an almost universal burning platform. From manufacturing to healthcare to service and even the public sector, providers can’t deliver – this while costs are rising, unemployment is at record lows and customer d ..read more

In 1985, about the time I was discovering there was a better way to produce products, The Natural, a film about an aging baseball player with extraordinary talent, was garnering multiple Academy Awards.   The archetype concerning natural ‘God-given’ abilities is common in western culture – in sports and the arts and even in business.  Early in my journey as a student of TPS,  I observed the very same archetype on the factory floor, this time applied to specific Lean tools.  In a very natural way, certain employees revealed uncanny focused abilities to reduce waste. &n ..read more