Most manufacturers implement Lean too early. And it costs them. If you need to improve now, do not implement Lean. When a plant is under pressure to improve, the instinct is to reach for Lean. Kaizen events. Value stream mapping. 5S blitzes. It looks like action. It feels like progress. But plants that are under pressure to improve have something in common: they always have known problems they aren't solving. And if you have problems you aren't successfully solving, the pro

Your inbox isn't just a mess, it's an indictment for how broken your processes are. I talk to leaders routinely who get 150-200 emails a day. If your process software owns routing, approvals, assignments, status, and escalations... what are you doing? It's like taking the parts you need to assemble something useful and mixing them in a big bowl with large quantities of similar looking useless junk. And then obligating yourself to look at everything in the bowl while you try

There are Three Systems Every Plant Needs and They Have to be Implemented in Order There are three core systems in every manufacturing operation. Most plants only build one of them and it's the wrong one to start with. Your first system is Accountability. It's the system that gets people to follow a process. Your second system is Continuous Improvement (CI). It's the system that makes the process your people are following better as you learn things. Your third system is Daily

Hand a team a mission with no planning and everything except the desired end-state becomes an unknown. Under those conditions, Hofstadter’s Law rules: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” Every unclear step, hidden risk, surprise need, and mismatched expectation lands squarely in the gap you left, which causes performance to suffer. Leaders who issue jobs like this live in perpetual disappointment because every single job