Still having doubts about the Toyota Production System’s benefits?

Several years ago Toyota went through one of the worst stages of its history. Just as the world was in the midst of a financial crisis, we all started to hear about runaway Toyotas and brake failures. TPS and Lean Manufacturing came under the microscope like never before, and many, specially the media, opportunists, the U.S. government (trying everything...

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Yokoten – Finding the holy grail of the Continuous Improvement process.

Yokoten , (loosely defined) is the reapplication of a solution to similar problems in different areas. This essentially boils down to a ‘teaching’ process, and how solutions are ‘taught’ across an organization so that team members can apply and improve upon the acquired knowledge. To me, the holy grail of the continuous improvement process is simply...

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Make sure Continuous Improvement and Innovation are never ending cycles.

No company should be doing business if they don’t ensure Continuous Improvement and Innovation initiatives are never ending cycles. In short – never ending cycle – means that a company needs to do what it can to out-do itself! A recent article in Bloomberg highlights the predicament BlackBerry got into by not doing this. They disrupted the...

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