Blog | Lean America

Traffic “Flow”

By admin, on August 19th, 2011

This is a magical video on the power of Flow. Flow is one of the major tenants of understanding and becoming a lean thinker. When ever thing stop and start waste appears, conversely efficiency is gained when we work towards Flow. Enjoy and the next time you enter a round about cheer and thank a Lean thinker! Thanks Michelle. for sending me this video.
Part 1: Roads FiT for People

Part 2: Roads FiT for People

Newt Gingrich

By admin, on August 18th, 2011

Please watch this Video. Newt Gingrich is wrong on one point. We should not teach lean to every member of congress, we should DEMAND that they are Lean experts in order to be a part of congress. We don’t have the time to teach them Lean.

Visual Controls

By admin, on August 15th, 2011

Sunriver, OR job site is thinking lean with strong visual controls

EPA Case Studies

By admin, on August 10th, 2011

Found some interesting case studies where the EPA and other state organization are going lean.

Lean: Packaging on Demand

By Paul Akers, on August 3rd, 2011

My friend Todd Peterson at Kaas Tailored met with Packsize recently. I wanted to share this video with you because it shows clear demonstrations of many lean principles such as one-piece-flow, eliminating batchwork, and just in time. Plus, I’m always looking for ways to share all the clear examples I can even if they don’t relate directly to government.

Washington Attorney General’s Office Going LEAN

By Paul Akers, on July 12th, 2011

How exciting to read this article today and share it with you. In the June issue of his monthly newsletter, Washington State Attorney General shared that his office is going to be adopting the LEAN principles. Following is excerpt from his article. The entire newsletter is viewable (with a video) on the Attorney General web site.

Earlier this year, my office adopted LEAN government, a collection of principles and methods that identify and eliminate activities that fail to add value to our mission. I was inspired to incorporate LEAN principles after visiting organizations such as Children’s Hospital in Seattle, where they have successfully adopted the Toyota Production System (based on the “kaizen” concept of continuous improvement which draws on staff member input).

Our goal in this effort is to rapidly identify ways to enhance our ability to complete the work of the Attorney General’s Office in a new budget environment with fewer employees. To that end, we used our “Speak Up” program as the platform to launch this new initiative.

Read the entire newsletter