Make Technology Work for People

While traveling this week, I noticed that my alarm clock in my hotel room has a motion detector on it.  In the middle of the night it does not illuminate the time until it detects motion.  A great idea.  The room stays darker and then when you move, presumable to see the what time it is, [...]

Almost Standard Work: 6 Pieces, 5 Steps and 3 Mistakes

Several weeks ago I posted an article related to building a pinewood derby car. After superior engineering, cutting edge tribology and a monster paint job, we didn’t bring anything home except the car and hopes of a better race next year. So our next project was at Lowe’s.

Fix My Dishwasher Please or How Can We Lean the Appliance Repair Industry?

I would like to relate my recent experience with trying to get a small puddle of water that forms in front of my dishwasher repaired over the past several months. I should preface this with I usually will repair my own appliances but this one happened to still be under warranty

Roundtable 6 – Are kaizen events ‘good’?

The ‘posters’ of the Lean Is Good blog have grown to four in number. Each of us brings a different background and set of experiences around Deming, lean, and learning. How could we leverage this diversity of thought and voice for the benefit of our readers? We ‘planned’ and came up with an idea that [...]

Lean Is Good NCAA Tourney Bracket

March madness is here and we have a bracket.  You will need a yahoo account to compete.  We’re not giving anything away so this is for the intrinsically motivated.  The winner will be declared the “NCAA Men’s Basketball Guru” among the readers of the Lean Is God blog. Click here to join. Click on “Join [...]

Roundtable 5 – How do you teach lean ‘up’ the organization?

The ‘posters’ of the Lean Is Good blog have grown to four in number. Each of us brings a different background and set of experiences around Deming, lean, and learning. How could we leverage this diversity of thought and voice for the benefit of our readers? We ‘planned’ and came up with an idea that [...]

22 Rules, Respecting Humanity?

I recently read a plant newsletter that list 22 keys to forklift safety. Twenty-two.  Many of these are pretty intuitive and are pretty easy to remember if not somewhat ‘natural’ to someone who is used to operating any motor vehicle.  Some forklift operators will probably read this list of rules and integrate a couple of [...]