Starting a small business is harder than ever given the current economic climate. Entrepreneurs have traditionally been tasked with the challenge of doing more with less – fewer resources, less room for error, a small number of employees, etc. Dean Swanson, a volunteer SCORE counselor, asserts that new entrepreneurs should familiarize themselves with Lean thinking
Continue reading »Northeast Georgia Health System is one of the largest organizations in Georgia. It has upward of 5,000 employees and 500 physicians, and with that scale comes complexity. Fortunately, by employing Lean healthcare, the company has been able to not only provide top-notch care to patients, but also bolster efficiency. Employees within the company frequently feel
Continue reading »Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall wants to make Canada's healthcare industry more efficient, both in terms of saving costs and providing better service to residents. Speaking with CBC News, Wall recently noted that he was urging many healthcare practitioners to adopt Lean practices to achieve this goal. It's all about innovation, he explained. While many Canadian
Continue reading »The bigger a company is, the more complex it grows. This can lead to efficiency problems throughout the supply chain – materials can go missing, procedures duplicated and work wasted. For athletics brand Nike, this was a critical issue until it adopted Lean manufacturing throughout the company, Supply Management reports. According to the Nike's fiscal
Continue reading »James Fazzino, chief of Australian fertilizer company Incitec, recently discovered the benefits of Lean manufacturing and is in the process of rolling the practice out to all of the business' operations, The Australian reports. Fazzino was quick to point out that the Australian government could do a lot to help the struggling manufacturing sector, but
Continue reading »A happy employee is an engaged employee, or so many business leaders think. But is this necessarily the case? A study conducted by MetLife suggests otherwise, indicating that employee loyalty sank to a three-year low in 2011. As HR Bartender notes, there are some notable differences between happiness and engagement, and company heads need to
Continue reading »There is a difference between being a boss and a good leader. An effective leader inspires those underneath him or her, driving meaningful change throughout a company because employees want to do their best. A boss simply tells people what to do. This is an important difference to understand, leadership counselor Ritch Eich tells Business
Continue reading »Kaizen and the Toyota Production System have revolutionized how many businesses produce goods and services. The Indianapolis Star recently explored a Toyota manufacturing plant in Indiana to see how this system worked outside of Japan. The factory, which dates back to 1928, practices many of the principles of Lean production. Unlike Henry Ford's factory mass
Continue reading »Begemot, a Kyrgyzstan-based restaurant chain, aspired to be Central Asia's first fast-food chain, taking inspiration from the popular American quick-service brand McDonald's. There was one problem, though: Service wasn't fast enough at Begemot, the Eurasia Review notes. The Central Asian chain is known for its own interpretation of the hamburger, which is similar to the
Continue reading »For business owners and other management figures, time is one resource they frequently don't have enough of. However, that is no excuse for not developing the proper leadership skills, Logistics Viewpoints asserts. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal highlights the time constraints faced by most executives – one sample of managers spent 18
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