Better Brainstorming

In last month’s blog I shared examples of the often-overlooked lean principle of Creativity Before Capital. The non-lean approach is to spend money – buy new equipment, hire more staff, or work overtime. The lean approach is to embrace the ingenuity of staff in using existing equipment and employees to meet customer needs.  In this month’s … Read more

Creativity Before Capital: An Overlooked Lean Principle

Most Lean Six Sigma practitioners focus their improvement efforts on applying tried and true lean tools to eliminate waste such as Work Simplification, Process Balancing, Mistake Proofing, Visual Management, and 5S. All of these tools can be very effective, and they certainly have their place. Yet the application of such tools is often done in … Read more

The Move Online for LSS

Since the start of 2020 TMAC staff have been very busy with Lean Six Sigma work including four different classes (two GBs, one BB, and one MBB), coaching of over 40 belts, preparing for the Lean & Six Sigma World conference, not to mention leading kaizen events and mapping sessions for various customers. Our schedule … Read more

Champion Roundtable Recap

Author: Russ Aikman
In January TMAC hosted our 4th Annual Lean Six Sigma Deployment Champion Roundtable. The Roundtable is a 1.5 day mini-conference focused on the goals, challenges, activities, and successes of individuals leading a Lean Six Sigma Program. At this year’s Roundtable we had representatives of 13 different companies.
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2019 Year in Review

Hard to believe but another year is almost gone. We’d like to share some of our activities and recognize those who helped make it such a fun, interesting, and productive year. January got off to a good start with the 3rd Annual LSS Champion Roundtable. We had 47 participants from 18 companies, some coming from … Read more

Stability vs. Disruption

Disruption is a very trendy word. Articles about disruptive products, technologies, and services are increasingly common in business magazines. This is especially true in some industries such as consumer electronics and entertainment. Recently I even saw a Linkedin profile of an individual who described himself as a ‘disruptive change agent’. Makes you wonder how he … Read more

The $10,000 Paper Clip

Author: Kurt Middelkoop
Recently I was facilitating an E3 (Economy, Energy, Environmental) workshop with a local company. We spent time learning about lean and how to identify value and non-value add activities. After covering these basics I lead the group out of the classroom to conduct a Gemba walk so they could put the lessons learned to practice. As all LSS practitioners know, direct observation of work activities is fundamental to lean.
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