It’s a growing trend in these United States: paying extra for conveniences such as bypassing the riffraff in airport security lines, or whizzing past mere mortal motorists on pristine, pay-for express lanes.

Nobody likes to be told they’re doing something wrong. But if you were doing something wrong due to a misunderstanding, and it was actually hindering your operations while adding unnecessary cost, wouldn’t you want to know?

The Japanese term, heijunka, also known as level-loading, production leveling, or production smoothing, facilitates system stability by addressing workload unevenness (mura) by leveling both volume and mix over time (see figure 1).

At GBMP’s recent Northeast Shingo Prize Conference in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM) displayed adaptations of lean to biomedical research in its Community of Lean Lounge.