The BP Gulf Disaster and the Role of Six Sigma

The Quality Council of Alberta(QCA) has long advised its membership against the use of Six Sigma preferring instead to use a more balanced Lean or Lean Six Sigma approach to Continuous Improvement (see: The QCA on Six Sigma and Lean). The BP Gulf disaster is providing good preliminary evidence as to why.
BP’s quality safety record [...] Read more »

Jim Womack Lean Institute Blog: Homicide by Example?

My LEI colleague Dave LaHote is fond of saying that managers – and especially senior managers – overestimate their effectiveness, particularly as they seek to improve their organizations through formal initiatives. And they underestimate the impact (often negative) of their daily personal actions on employees. Recently I witnessed a striking example while visiting a metal [...] Read more »

Jim Womack Blog: Back to Work

Only a month ago I wrote about going beyond Toyota. And in light of the last month’s events, I suppose that must seem prescient. But actually it wasn’t because I wasn’t writing about Toyota. I was writing about the path ahead for our Lean Community.
I want to continue that thought process this month, based on [...] Read more »

Why Toyota Succeeded, by Dr. Toyoda (Think Deming)

Everyone today seems to be talking about Toyota.  Recent problems with gas peddles and brakes have over-shadowed a spectacular rise to success, from a company few had heard of, to the number one automobile manufacturer in the world. It would be a mistake, however, to focus on the recent short term events and ignore the [...] Read more »

Beyond Toyota

Fifteen years ago, when Dan Jones and I wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review to launch Lean Thinking, the editors insisted on the title “Beyond Toyota”. I found this exasperating because it implied we were somehow going beyond Toyota’s discoveries about the best methods for creating maximum value with minimum waste. In fact, [...] Read more »

James Womack: On Our Watch

A few weeks ago I walked through the Arsenale in Venice, which has been in continuous use for building and overhauling military ships since 1104. The Arsenale is still an Italian naval base and visiting requires permission from navy headquarters in Rome. But my interest was not in present-day activities. It was in the remarkable [...] Read more »

Making Everyone Whole

by James Womack, Lean Enterprise Institute
I’ve had a big smile on my face for much of the last month because I’ve had the opportunity to visit progressive organizations on three continents to look at their efforts to create lean value streams. Walking through any process, good or bad, seems to put a smile on my [...] Read more »

Minitab: Statistical Analysis Misconceptions

by: Issac Newton of Minitab, UK
I have been employed by Minitab for the last ten years. For eight of these, I have been running Minitab courses as a trainer. During this time I have had contact with many users of Minitab, either attending courses or calling for support. These users come from many different industries, [...] Read more »

In Search of Value Stream Architects

by James Womack, Lean Enterprise Institute
Recently I’ve been spending most of my gemba time walking through value-creating processes in organizations far away from manufacturing. And the further away I get — for example, all the way to healthcare — the more I find myself asking, “Who designed this wasteful, incapable, unavailable, inadequate, inflexible, uneven, and [...] Read more »