It seems that at every Conference, Symposium, or other gathering of higher-learning and thought-leaders – where the topic is Lean Six-Sigma – many of the attendees, and almost all of the speakers, glorify and hold with the highest veneration the supposedly unmatched performance and prowess of Japanese companies and their management. Enshrined as proof-positive in…
Thirty years ago this month, in August of 1985, I started my first business, XONITEK Systems Corporation. It didn’t really dawn on me until I found myself at the David N. Deutsch Saratoga Weekend (aka “Camp David”), which is like a mini (very mini) World Economic Forum (aka “Davos” after the town in Switzerland where…
It’s Spring – finally. The Winter darkness has noticeably given way to longer hours of daylight. The cold and the snows are abating. The crocuses and early spring flowers are in bloom. It’s a pleasure to waken to the birds chirping. And a person can feel that Spring is just around the corner. That is,…
CONTENT PARTNER CONTRIBUTIONAs seen in the Jun-2015 edition of the Lean Management Journal Continuous Improvement (CI) is a well-established concept within organisations. Many have developed elaborate CI strategies and transformation programmes. However, in our opinion, there is a fundamental problem that advocates of CI need to address. How successful have we been as a CI…
Communication. We talk about how important it is. How critical it is to have in any endeavor in order to move the ball down the field and, ultimately, for success. Yet in almost every instance where there is failure, we can almost always trace back to one of the root-causes for the failure being a…
