If you login to LinkedIn, or any social network for that matter, you’ll probably come across at least three pieces of self-help advice in the first minute or so. I haven’t done the math, but I’d say that’s a fair guess. In the end, it all boils down to a vague and often narcissistic soup
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Have you ever seen those videos of Japanese factories where the workers do morning exercises together? Before you dismiss something like that as a cultural quirk, it might be worthwhile to look at it with an open mind. A lot of useful ideas can seem silly at first, simply because they are new and unfamiliar.
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“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.” ― Paulo Freire It’s Monday morning. The kids are eating breakfast and watching cartoons. A parent says, “You’ll miss the bus,” and the children reluctantly turn off the TV. It’s a typical scene for many families. When the children get home, the television is waiting
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Adapting to Customer Demand In Lean, we talk a lot about meeting customer demand. Often, the conversation turns to cycle time, takt time, and how to meet demand just-in-time. Yet, there is another factor of customer demand that people often ignore in this process: What does the customer actually want? You may have an established
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Despite feeling like there is never enough time in the day, Americans now have more free time than ever. Sociologist John P. Robinson at the University of Maryland, insists that the issue is one of perception rather than actual commitments. Hanna Rosin summarized his findings in Slate Magazine, “Robinson doesn’t ask us to meditate, or
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Robert Sheridan is the CEO of Menlo, a software business in Michigan. If you ask him what he fears most from his employees, he would probably say complacency. Sheridan’s solution is a Lean approach to collaboration: constantly shuffling teams and seating arrangements to ensure that everyone in the company works with a variety of colleagues.
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Internet speeds have improved dramatically over the past decade. At the same time, computer technology has grown more powerful, enabling people to access the web from even small mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. As such, many businesses have been taking advantage of the internet and new technologies to revolutionize the way they operate.
Continue reading »Companies live and die based on the investments they make. Invest in the right people, programs, practices and equipment and the business will likely succeed. On the flip side, investing poorly can lead an organization to failure. This is especially true in today's economy, where budget is a real issue and companies can't afford to
Continue reading »Boyd Coatings Research, a company that applies high-performance coatings to specialized medical, industrial and aerospace products, recently received a Workforce Training Fund Grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The grant gives companies funding to launch in-depth training programs that will help them improve operations. The coatings application business has decided to use the grant to
Continue reading »The term “sustainability” has a variety of meanings. For some companies, it refers to the ability to stay in business and maintain prosperity. For others, it could mean ecological preservation through the minimization of waste and pollution. When discussing Lean manufacturing, however, it takes on a different definition altogether – it's a balance between the
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