Standard Work in Lean Services–Dr. Balle

Lean technology has now evolved from the manufacturing floor to the whole enterprise. Many companies have found real value in applying the fundamental concepts of Lean throughout the organization. The lean concepts of Kaizen, PDCA and the tools such as Pareto Charts, 5 Why’s and even Poka Yoke are commonplace. However, the concept of Standard Read More …

Outside the Walls of a Lean Enterprise

As Dr. Balle said, “Toyota didn’t become number one by having lower manufacturing costs, they became number one by making cars people bought.” Dr. Michael Ballé is a business researcher and consultant and has studied lean transformation for the past 15 years. He is Associate Researcher at Télécom ParisTech and the co-founder of the French Read More …

Has Knowledge Management disguised itself as Lean Marketing?

It is not a disguise it is reality. Your marketing department should be investing many of their resources in capturing and building a structure for knowledge management. It is the core competence of your organization. If you look at the sole purpose of a Lean Marketing department it is disseminating pertinent information to the customer Read More …

Lean Thinking Perspectives from Dr. Michael Balle

After interviewing Dr. Michael Balle for an upcoming podcast and a short video series, we continued our discussion. This is a short outtake on Lean Thinking and a few responses on his thoughts about Toyota. Related Information: Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute The Ultimate Sales and Marketing Tool Read More …

5 Cs of Driving Market Share Special Offer

Organizations need to change from a customer satisfaction focus to a customer value focus. The Five Cs of Driving Market Share serves as the template for this transaction. 5 Cs of Driving Market Share is not a project-by-project approach for reducing the costs of marketing activities, but rather an approach that seeks to enhance marketing’s Read More …

Lean Coaching with Jeff Liker

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Liker celebrated author and authority on Toyota and the Toyota Production System. I was interviewing Jeff about his upcoming book, The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement (Book release date is April 22nd, Podcast will be later this month) and we wandered off on the question of coaching and Read More …