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Armed with a degree in organizational psychology, I started my career in operational improvement during the early 1970s with a nationally recognized Hartford, Connecticut-based insurance company. As part of the company's productivity services team, my job was to conduct stopwatch time studies…
Laurel Thoennes @ QD
“What makes a personal kanban any better than a to-do list?” asked Julie, crossing out a completed task on her “ta da!” list with exaggerated strokes.
“With personal kanban you visualize your work, it becomes tangible, you get kinesthetic feedback, it’s flexible, contextual, and it promotes…
Value stream or other lean analysis helps identify the main obstacles to flow in a process. Improvement projects using lean tools in a transactional environment (i.e., office) are often confronted with the following problem: Lean teams lack a methodology to consistently problem-solve how to…
Pete Abilla
Some time ago, while consulting for a huge call center, I took a group of customer service agents for a little gemba walk and a quick activity to demonstrate a few lean fundamentals. What was scheduled for a 60-minute exercise turned out to be an experience that awakened the agents, several of whom…
Stewart Anderson
The 5 Whys is a well-known root cause analysis technique that originated at Toyota and has been adopted by many other organizations that have implemented lean manufacturing principles. Unlike more sophisticated problem-solving techniques, the 5 Whys doesn’t involve data segmentation, hypothesis…
Allen Huffman
With all the emphasis today on quality, and studies showing that quality is very important to the leaders of American business, why are so many organizations struggling to achieve and sustain quality systems? The answer is that managers have been inundated for 20 years with a parade of quality…
