It's not news that when you have a bottleneck in your process you have a problem, backlogs build up, sales don't go out on time, customers get frustrated and cash flow starts to suffer. Identifying your bottlenecks and understanding the value of them then is important, so why don't more people pay attention to them? Moreover why isn't more tim...

Often you will hear an organisation talk about being 'lean' they have lean processes, they have driven down the waste in their systems, they have 5s and Kanban's and management by walking around, everyone is clear on the goal and so many more great things happening, in their manufacturing area. Yet take 10 steps into their offices, their servi...

When we get the call from new or even existing clients eager to start their lean journey they are always desperate to get started. They have heard from friends, colleagues, industry bodies and magazine articles what it is all about and so they know what they have to do and so just want to get started. Invariably however, when we ask what their...

One of the 5 fundamental principles of lean is to obtain flow, find a way that your product or service flows seamlessly from the start of your process to your client and do this as fast as is practicable to maintain a high-quality product or service. There are always many ways to do this and it will vary from organisation to organisation since ever...

It's a bit of a sitcom stable, the main character comes out with a comment or a put down and then gasps, the hand goes to their mouth and then they utter that terrible phrase... Oh no! I sound like my Mum! (or Dad as the case may be), the audience laughs, and our lead character looks both stunned and a little worried, are they in fact turning into ...

I get asked pretty much every week what Lean is, what's its purpose, how can it possibly help my organisation, we don't make cars, or volume or even, we don't make anything – we are a service organisation! From time to time I also get told "we don't want lean here – we don't want to see people losing their jobs". I've even had the whole 6 sigma vs ...

Joe walked into a doctor's surgery convinced he was not long for this world. He sat patiently waiting for the doctor, who was running 30 minutes late, but finally it was his turn. The Doctor, an elderly and portly man with a beard that would make Santa proud, asked what the problem was. Joe explained that everywhere hurt, he said that when he touch...

Creating flow in your operation is the ideal state if you want to have a lean process. Anything that stops you flowing product (or services) from start to finish in your organisation is something you want to eliminate, if you can't eliminate it completely then you need to minimise it. It is fair to say that in general terms anything that stops your...

I overheard a conversation the other week at a between a couple of people who talking about lean. Naturally, my ears pricked up and I just hard to eavesdrop a little bit. They were making a list of their 'lean projects' they had completed already, which was quite a list. They were then going to set their sights on their next 'lean project' and how ...