George Chemers
Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in the United States, decided to review the way it procures items and services throughout a school year with the goal of saving money...
Arun Hariharan
During the past dozen years, companies I’ve been involved with have completed more than a thousand lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects. About 40 percent of these projects had a direct financial benefit,...
Carly Barry
To promote ethical and moral responsibility in shaping its graduates, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology created a sustainability initiative to reduce its own environmental footprint.
As part...
Arun Hariharan
During the past dozen years, companies I have worked with have, between them, completed more than 1,000 lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects. Based on this experience, I’ve found that improvement projects...
Robert A. Brown
Chances are you are not fully satisfied with the results of your lean initiatives. It’s also likely that lean thinking is not used to improve your employees’ skills in working together. That’s...
Mike Micklewright
Got your attention by what seems a bizarre claim? Yes, you can significantly reduce the number of procedures you maintain by converting your ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) to one that is...
Kyle Toppazzini
One of the most challenging issues I hear from people within the lean Six Sigma community is how to ensure that a lean Six Sigma project is sustainable. If your lean Six Sigma project is highly...
James Brewton
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....
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
“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,...
Michael Ohler, Ph.D., Leo Bloch, and Volker Müller
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...
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...
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...
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...
