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 ...

Are you looking to reduce waste and improve efficiency in your printing operation? John Compton, principal at Compton & Associates LLC, a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB), and senior member of ...

If you peruse major business publications, you have noted phrases such as "lean thinking," "lean transformation," "lean implementation," or "lean business." They all refer to the same lean process.

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 ...

“They need a conveyor,” said the guy on my left as we observed the assembly process. Operators walked back and forth from the assembly station to bring finished parts to the shelf and to get ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Nearly 20 years ago, the authors of “The Machine that Changed the World” caused a proverbial earthquake when they explained how lean systems would reinvent the automobile industry. James P. Womack, ...