How well is your path marked?

I remember growing up in a small community in Western Pennsylvania where the suburbs were just blooming surrounded by trees and fields. The sixties were a time of growth for this area and the mills and mines that filled the valleys were running at full tilt to provide the raw materials that make up a […]

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 […]

Royal Order of the Duck Rules for Effective Communication

The world we live in today presents us with more challenges to effective communication than at any time in history. Modern electronic devices, the speed at which most people live their lives, and cultural challenges in a shrinking global economy provide daily examples of the problems we increasingly face in effectively communicating with each other. […]

It can happen in just a minute, but the effects can last for a lifetime

If you look back on your life, could you pick one single year that has been more eventful than others? I suppose it depends on what you use for a measuring stick. The loss of a loved one, a critical illness, catastrophes all have their own impacts. Every once in a while, the impact of […]

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 […]