Blogs

Samuel Obara has published a great new book titled Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry. read more

Chris Ortiz has published many books on kaizen and its benefits, but his recent book -- The Psychology of Lean Improvements: Why Organizations Must Overcome Resistance and Change the Culture -- covers an entirely different area of Lean initiatives: the psychology behind why businesses avoid Lean transformations. read more

I met Gordon Ghirann about five years at an Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) conference. At that time, he was giving a presentation at the conference about the benefits of "Self-Balancing" line method. read more

I recently spoke with Allan Coletta, who is the author of a new book titled The Lean 3P Advantage: A Practitioner's Guide to the Production Preparation Process, and asked him directly: "What is 3P and why should it be used when developing new products?" Here is Allan's full response:Lean 3P (Production Preparation Process) is an event-driven process for developing a new product concurrently with the operation that will produce it. read more

This very interesting article about GE Appliances' new hybrid water heater manufacturing facility in Louisville, Kentucky was just posted on the BuildingOnline site yesterday. read more

Over on the Hospitals and Health Networks site, I read this great article about the Denver Health organization's incredible benefits resulting from its six-year Lean journey. read more

Recently, I had the chance to speak in person with Michael Levine, author of a new book published this past December titled A Tale of Two Transformations: Bringing Lean and Agile Software Development to Life. read more

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a healthy and happy holiday season.CRC Press, the parent company of Productivity Press, recently established a YouTube channel that will feature many Productivity Press authors discussing performance-improvement topics as well as methodologies explored in their respective books. read more

I attend many Lean conferences throughout the year that focus on different areas of the supply chain. Presenters there often state how the concept of material requirements planning (MRP) is outdated and works as a detriment to Lean thinking. read more

Recently, I had the chance to speak in person with Dr. Willis Thomas, author of a new book published in November 2011 titled The Basics of Project Evaluation and Lessons Learned. read more