Taichi Ohno, progenitor of the Toyota Production System, identified seven forms of waste, and lean insiders often add an eighth: the waste of human resources. I propose a ninth: the waste of ...

In the 1990s while first learning about Japanese manufacturing and Toyota, I was also studying organizational development. A retired University of Michigan researcher, Lawrence Lippitt, ran a monthly ...

The application of ‘lean thinking’ manufacturing and management strategies can help reduce waste and build more efficient supply chains, according to new research. Lean thinking is a management ...

In today's business landscape, lean principles have become essential to achieving efficient and effective operations management. With a foundation built on reducing waste and fostering continuous ...

In this ongoing series, The Fix, we look to problems faced by real companies and how they solved them. The Fix: Handmaker began doing research on how to improve manufacturing processes in a holistic ...

We continue in our series on Lean Construction and the seven major “wastes” found in our effort to construct quality that is safe, productive and profitable. Let’s examine the waste that can come from ...

Companies adopting a Lean philosophy strive to remove or shorten time spent on activities that the customer doesn’t value. For example, although steps like estimating and makeready are thought of as ...