The Lean Facilitator

The practice of lean involves eliminating waste wherever it is found and solving problems (which typically leads to waste elimination). In all things, we are trying to remove the barriers that keep our teams from being successful. But team building can be a tricky thing in any culture. Most western cultures are deeply rooted in […]

Diving into Lean

What a great week! I spent most of it in Orlando Florida at the Peabody Hotel participating in meetings and discussions around “lean culture” with members of the Lean Enterprise Institute’s Lean Transformation Summit 2013. http://www.lean.org/Events/2013_lean_transformation_summit.cfm The Institute is a non-profit organization made up of people like John Shook and Jim Womack who are certainly […]

Conflict? My Team?… oh yeah, it’s Monday…

Sunday afternoons are a great time around our house. We read the paper, settle the schedule for the week, walk the dogs, and sometimes take a nap. Dinner will be grilled “something” in every season but deep winter, and the TV gets a break until later in the evening. The routine has developed over the […]

Searching for Superman – why CI/Lean initiatives often fail (Part 2)

Failure is not an option… but most of the time it is assured One common set of factors that can affect success or failure for a Continuous Improvement/Lean Initiative is the recruitment, selection process, and use of a CI/Lean leader. Leadership at all levels has an impact on every initiative but this becomes more critical […]

Searching for Superman – why CI/Lean initiatives often fail (Part 1)

Starting a Continuous Improvement (CI)/Lean Journey I have been working on a project for a few weeks that categorizes what companies are looking for when they seek a lean or continuous improvement leader candidate. While that sounds rather boring on the face of it, the project has actually been a very interesting look at why […]

I Came To Learn About Lean… and All I Got Were These Legos ™

Today’s post is in honor of all those who are seeking a better and more productive workplace (Trying to put some Lean back into theleansubmariner) Establishing a “lean” culture based on continuous improvement has been a very sought after goal for many organizations over the past fifteen years. With the rising costs of labor, raw […]

A new day

Today was a special day. My business web site went live today! I will still continue to add stories and commentary to the Lean Submariner but the website bobmacpherson-speaker.info is my way to satisfy my passion for business process improvement, training services, and speaking. Check it out if you get the chance. In the next […]

Are you “Value Added”?

In the “lean” world, a lot of time is spent in determining which of your processes are “Value Added”, “Non-Value Added but Necessary” or “Non-Value Added”. There are a lot of definitions for these phrases depending on which consultant is trying to sell a new book this week. I try to keep my definitions pretty […]

SWOT you talkin’ about Willis?

I am taking a break from the cares of the world today and having a little lean and continuous improvement fun. The old TV show Different Strokes is pretty appropriate for a day like today. It was fiction of course, but you get a 1%er taking on the responsibility to raise a couple of kids […]

How did this thing get so far out of alignment?

Like many submariners, I spent a few weeks in one shipyard or another helping to fix wear and tear issues. As an Auxiliaryman (A-Ganger) I quickly found that there is a special kind of hell reserved for us in a shipyard. Since our equipment and systems run the length of the boat, our work could […]