Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
One of the questions Mike Rother was trying to answer with his research that became Toyota Kata was: “What are the unseen managerial routines that lie behind Toyota’s success with continuous improvement and adaption?” And to summarize (in my own words), what he found was: 1. A pattern for problem-solving and thinking that is taught … Continue reading "What are YOUR unseen managerial routines?"
I live on an arterial street about half a mile (800 meters) from Everett Fire Department Station 5, so it isn’t unusual to hear emergency vehicles go by. Last evening, though, we heard a LOT of them, coming from not just Station 5, but elsewhere. Time to turn on the scanner. “Fire, Residential, Confirmed” about … Continue reading "Standards Capture Your Knowledge"
This photo says a lot about the organization. For those of you who might not come from an industrial background, the big red button on this podium is the E-Stop – the Emergency Stop button that shuts down EVERYTHING in the machine IMMEDIATELY. It is there in case someone is about to get hurt (or … Continue reading "What is your “OK Zone?”"
I was working with this company mainly on their shop floor processes: Quality, Process Improvement, Daily Management – classic stuff. It was a medium sized plant (a few hundred people) that was part of a larger company with significant business footprints in Europe and North America. They hadn’t involved me in their upcoming ERP implementation. … Continue reading "Recovering a Failed ERP…
Many years ago I worked with a senior manager. He was very savvy about continuous improvement and TPS – he had been engaging in the space for many years before the word “lean” entered the lexicon. He understood it at a deep systems level, saw how all of the pieces interacted into a coherent whole, … Continue reading "The (Futile) Search for the Perfect Model"
The client organization was working to incorporate the Toyota Kata mindset – scientific thinking / systematic problem solving – into their daily routines. This was early on in my journey as well, we were all learning. The company had a structure for how they wanted to go about it. My role was to advise, coach, … Continue reading "Using the Coaching Kata Outside of the Improvement Kata"
Last fall I got to spend another week hanging out with the awesome team at Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor. My last visit there was scheduled for early April 2020… but we probably all know what happened back then. I am saying all of that because I am going to use their project management system … Continue reading "Project Management is Daily Management at Menlo Innovations"
Last week’s post about The Improvement Kata and DMAIC prompted some interesting discussions during the week, and I’d like to share some additional thoughts. Before you read on, reflect a bit on what you think I totally missed. Does this post go where you expected it to? Does it confirm, or refute, your hypothesis about … Continue reading "Follow-on thoughts (What I Missed!): Improvement Kata and…
I've talking to a couple of people about how the Improvement Kata might map into DMAIC. Let me know what you think!
Following last week’s post about the Toyota Kata Experiment Record we did a bit of a deep dive on the same topic on the weekly Friday Zoom call. I think the discussion was pretty rich – though rich discussions happen frequently in these sessions. If you weren’t there, and aren’t on the mail list for … Continue reading "Kata School Cascadia Discussion: The Experiment Record"