The Lean Thinker

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Introduction to Toyota Kata

The Lean Thinker

I recently did an “Introduction to Toyota Kata” session for Kata School Cascadia. The intent is to give an overview of my interpretation of the background, and how Toyota Kata fits into, and augments, your Continuous Improvement effort. Here is a direct URL in case you can’t see the embed on your phone or pad: [link] In this presentation I go over what I mean when I say “culture” and then briefly discuss a “continuous improvement culture.” Then introduce

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What Conversations Does Your VSM Drive?

The Lean Thinker

Continuing on the theme of value stream mapping (and process mapping in general) – in the last post, Where is your value stream map? I outlined the typical scenario – the map is built by the Continuous Improvement Team, and they are the ones primarily engaged in the conversations about how to close the gap between the current state and the future state.

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Where is your value stream map?

The Lean Thinker

Thanks to everyone who left comments on the last post, Learning to See in 2023. You are making me think. Although Learning to See (the book) describes building your value stream map on A3 / 11×17 paper, most of the maps I have seen have been large affairs on a wall. I like this approach because it shifts people into the position of standing side-by-side talking about what is in front of them, which fosters collaboration.

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Learning to See in 2023

The Lean Thinker

Pat’s comments on my last post reminded me of another post I had written a decade (!!!) ago titled Learning to See in 2013 *. I think it is time for reflection and an update. That being said, I think the 2013 post has actually aged pretty well. I don’t see anything in it I would retract, just some things to further clarify or amplify. Of course that implies that we (our community) is still largely stuck in the same groove we were a decade ago.

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Signs of a Failing Lean “Implementation”

The Lean Thinker

Let me profile a company – I have an actual company in mind, but this one is only a concrete example. This company has been engaged with continuous improvement since at least 1998. Yet, just a few weeks ago, they posted an opening for a Continuous Improvement Director. And this isn’t the first time. I have seen this position posted by this company every couple of years.

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Another Tale from the Past

The Lean Thinker

This all happened nearly three decades ago. Since then the company has been through a series of mergers and acquisitions. Thus, the only thing I can be certain of is that things are different today – at least I hope so. It was Tuesday afternoon of a traditional five-day kaizen event. Monday morning had been spent training the team on the basics of “JIT” including some fundamental principles and a 1:1 flow simulation just to demonstrate some of the possibilities.

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The CEO’s New Strategy

The Lean Thinker

by Hank C. Andersen Not many years ago there was a CEO so exceedingly fond of finding the right strategy that he spent all of his money on consultants to tell him what the strategy should be. One day there came two consultants and they said they could craft the most magnificent strategy imagianable. Not only would it solve all of the problems, and produce great prosperity and profitability, but it had an added feature: It would make no sense to anyone not qualified to be in his job. “This