Lean Six Sigma methodologies have been around since Henry Ford’s creation of the assembly line in the early 1900s.

Toyota is in the news daily for its safety-related recalls. It’s sad… no, tragic. How could a company’s quality reputation be diluted so quickly? The pundits are saying that it will take many years to regain its lost quality reputation.

I received pair of questions about lean logistics over the past few weeks that prompted this article. The questions were “What is the milk run method?” and “What is the role of the water spider?” 

In July of 2008, I stepped out of an engineering leadership role and into an operational role. The transition was exciting and overwhelming.

A management system is the framework of processes and procedures used to ensure that an organization can fulfill all tasks required to achieve its objectives.

The following words of an anonymous poet as he (or she) immortalized the lessons from Deming’s funnel experiment.

“Tamper, tamper is the game, try to make all the same. Squeak and tweak it every day, off we go to the Milky Way.” 

“Our corporate mission is to deliver the ‘Best Value in Energy and Related Services,’” according to a large Midwestern electric and gas utility company.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re leading a Six Sigma project on a transactional process of some kind, something not directly tied to manufacturing or measurement of product quality.

Toyota’s legendary lean processes didn’t come out of nowhere. They were forged by the fire of urgency in post-World War II Japan when resources were scarce. Toyota innovated—and continued to innovate.