When talking about Lean, usually people tend to focus on the process management part. However, few realize that just adopting the most emblematic management tools such as Kanban may not necessarily bring the desired improvement without changing the way they lead. Now, we don’t plan to bore you with all the leadership fluff. Nor do […]
Reading Don Reinertsen’s book “The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development” was a truly enlightening experience, especially when it comes to understanding queues and the problems that queues cause in a regular product development process. Having almost five years of development behind Kanbanize, and many more before that, we came to […]
Lean is an endless topic that can be discussed until the end of time. The positive impact on the way organizations work and achieve their goals made the methodology formidably successful and widespread across various industries. The Lean concept appears to be a universal management tool. We’ve sure come a long way since the dawn […]
In the world of business, leaders must maximize efficiency, eliminate waste, even out roadblocks, and keep productions flowing in accordance with demand. Once a business venture takes flight, however, a lot of different people get involved, each with their own knowledge, talent and ways for getting things accomplished. In order to ensure flow and consistency […]
At the twilight of 2018, we evaluate what we managed to achieve throughout the year and look forward with hope to what is to come in 2019. If you are among those brave leaders who are always chasing process improvement, at this time of the year, you are probably considering how to scale your efforts […]
In today’s business world, it is very important to have colleagues that you can rely on. That’s why keeping them engaged is an important thing that every leader should focus on. Аccording to a 2017 study by Gallup of the State of the Global Workplace, only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs. […]
“Respect for people” is one of the two pillars of Toyota’s corporate culture and the Lean management philosophy. Yet, people think it’s just about being polite. If you ask 100 top-level managers “Do you respect your employees?”, you will probably receive a hundred answers “Of course, I treat employees with respect and dignity”. If your […]
Lean can be a powerful asset for running your product development team and even a whole company. A perfect example of that is Somabe (Soraluze Makina Bereziak SLL), a company that designs and manufactures specialized machines. Let’s follow their six-year journey that led to the implementation of Lean and Portfolio Kanban on a company level […]
One of the key benefits of Lean is that teams are largely autonomous and self-organizing. The assumption is that every team member knows what is expected of them and when, and are able to work independently on tasks and deliver quality work with little oversight. However, this basic assumption of autonomy and self-sufficiency does not […]
Lean methods emerged from manufacturing, where conventional wisdom was that the goal is to produce as many goods as possible, as quickly as possible. When Taiichi Ohno introduced the Andon cord at Toyota, authorizing every employee on the assembly line to immediately halt production when they noticed a problem or defect, even people in his […]