In 1937, a truck driver by the name of Malcolm McLean sat in line at a shipyard, weighting to unload his freight. He knew there had to be a better way! Over the next twenty years he revolutionized the shipping industry!

A Toyota Group Leader spent two hours cleaning and organizing his desk that he had just moved out onto the floor. Read about how this left a lasting impression on one of his new employees.

Can you put yourself in your customer’s shoes? Can you walk through your product using your customer’s eyes? What would you see, and how would you rate yourself? If it is less than 10, then you have some work to do. Make it easy to do business with you and customers will line up for your service.

As I approached the bridge, I could see floor trim scattered across the road and a man frantically trying to pick up the splintered fragments as cars zoomed by him. I quickly pulled over to offer my assistance to his plight. He looked at me, shook his head and in an exasperated tone said, “I think I need to go home and get back in bed… it’s been one of those days.”

During one of my early kaizens (I was serving as the Kaizen lead under the watchful eye of my sensei), we had uncovered what our team thought was the world’s most unsolvable problem, just slightly smaller than world hunger.

The first day of a Kaizen is mostly about getting a rock-solid grip on the “current state.” You are trying to guide the team to consensus on how things operate as they are, not as we wish they were. Typically during this process, you can also uncover where the gaps are within the current state and identify some of the problems holding the company, team, or organization back.

Your company cannot operate efficiently in silos. In an unstoppable organization, your people, processes, and platforms all work to support one another.

Making improvements is hard because it falls on leadership to set the tone. People will follow a good leader, so focus on yourself first and the rest will fall into place.

The problem is that these plants get so busy chasing these random issues, that they don’t realize that they are just chasing symptoms of the problems.  And usually, without some outside influence, there is no way for them to see the pattern. 

If you don’t have a morning routine, I encourage you to adopt one. It might just help you enjoy your days more than you are currently.

Most companies claim safety is important, but their actions aren’t reflective of that claim.

“Why don’t my employees bring me these problems?!” Joe the business owner asked me, exasperated.

I believe deep down, no one wants to believe that “work sucks” or that life really is mostly made up of doing things they “hate.” They just haven’t been shown that there is an alternative. Trust me, there is an alternative

Is your company easy to work with? Or is it a pain? The difference in your bottom line could be huge.

In talking with a client this week, I had a thought I wanted to share with you: Are you the sailor or the sailboat?

If you have ever tried working through people skills and challenging situations, you know that they are not easy, in fact, they are very hard.

Too many companies leave Continuous Improvement at the Shop Floor. Taking CI to the enterprise is the smart move.

Most people think of improvement with LSS as happening on the shop floor with an eye towards increasing throughput and/or reducing costs.