Today's blog post -- it's not just about sports, it's about managing and measuring improvement...

The post Is Andre Drummond a Better Free Throw Shooter This Season? appeared first on Lean Blog.

If you watched this year's World Series, you saw a lot of home runs. There were many dramatic home runs in late innings or extra innings. It might have seemed like a significantly high number. My friend Dan Markovitz asked me, via a Twitter DM, to look at this. Before speculating about cause-and-effect, let's look […]

The post The 2017 World Series Had the Most Home Runs Ever. So What? appeared first on Lean Blog.

Mark's Note: Today's post is by a new guest contributor, Tom Gormley. I first met Tom back in 2009 or 2010 when my wife and I were in Boston for the year. He was in the process of switching into healthcare and he has had a few roles with different health systems since then. You […]

The post Guest Post: Tom Brady (TB12) – Lean Thinker appeared first on Lean Blog.

Mark's Note: Today's post is a guest post by Erwin van der Koogh, who comes to us from Australia. The thoughts and opinions here are his, although I agree with enough of it to publish it here. I'll be participating in the discussion via comments and I hope you'll join in. By Erwin van der […]

The post Guest Post: The One Thing Lean Six Sigma Got Wrong About Lean appeared first on Lean Blog.

The ideas, principles, and methods that we'd recognize as “Lean” aren't exclusively of Japanese origin. Many of us, myself included, draw inspiration from Toyota, reading books about them and visiting their factories. For me, I've had a chance to visit Toyota plants in Japan, California, and Texas, and the story is very consistent. As Masaaki […]

The post Good Ideas, Lean Ideas, Keep Crossing the Pacific appeared first on Lean Blog.

One of the more popular email signature quotes that I see (at least amongst Lean practitioners) is this priceless gem from Dr. W. Edwards Deming: “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”   It seems that this quote, and a few other Deming-isms, are more popular than Dr. Deming's actual teachings. The […]

The post Don’t Threaten People with This Famous Dr. Deming Quote appeared first on Lean Blog.

As a frequent flyer on American Airlines and a former DFW-area resident, I pay a lot of attention to the troubled airline. American is currently going through a bankruptcy, er “restructuring,” and there's a lot of what's called “labor strife” happening right now. I'm curious why these labor/management disputes are never called “management strife,” but […]

The post Can SPC Show if American Airlines Pilots are Staging a “Sick Out”? appeared first on Lean Blog.

Is LEAN an acronym? NO.

The post Is Lean an Acronym? Is it “LEAN”? “L.E.A.N.?” appeared first on Lean Blog.