Gemba Walk 🔥

Lean thinking is often misunderstood in American industry. Some hear “lean” and think cost cutting. Others think speed at any cost. But Lean, as shaped by leaders like Taiichi Ohno within the Toyota Motor Corporation, was never about squeezing people. It was about eliminating waste so that human effort could be focused on what truly…

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is one of the most practical tools in Lean. It shows how work actually moves through a system — not how we think it moves. It captures both material flow and information flow, and it forces leaders to see where time, effort, and risk accumulate. In an industrial setting like an…

Most American operations don’t lack effort. They lack focus. The Theory of Constraints, developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and popularized in The Goal, teaches that every system has one primary constraint limiting throughput. If that constraint doesn’t improve, the system doesn’t improve—no matter how many other projects you complete. The problem is cultural. When output…