10/06/14 by Ankit Patel | lean business system, lean culture, lean transformation, line design |

In the last post we talked about an Introduction to Lean Line Design.  In that post we introduced terms that we will be using to describe the Lean Line Design process.  The first step in the process is to understand what’s possible given your company culture.  This is all part…

09/25/14 by Ankit Patel | lean transformation, Uncategorized |

Line design is one of the best ways to get bottom line savings quickly with Lean.  A Lean line design is the process used to streamline a process to remove waste but doing it systematically.  Here are some terms you need to know before we get into how to do…

09/15/14 by Ankit Patel | lean culture, lean transformation |

In part I of Leading a Lean Transformation we explored the business results you can get by doing a Lean Transformation.  It’s not uncommon to see successful Lean Transformations improve a business by 30%.  However the success rate is very low.  Over 70% of change efforts fail the first time…

09/13/12 by Ankit Patel | change management, lean transformation |

If you are going to through a change like Lean or Six Sigma there are many things you want to consider.  One fact is that at best only 30% of any kind of change you do is typically sustainable and gets the results you had hoped for.  Here are the…

05/14/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid, lean transformation, motivating employees |

Employee engagement is a key success factor for organizational transformation. In a recent McKinsey survey, nearly 100% of respondents who characterized their companies’ change-management initiatives as extremely successful said employees could contribute ideas to shape the efforts. And nearly a quarter of the extremely successful transformations were planned by groups…

10/14/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, standard work, the lean way consulting |

Most everyone knows about the leaning tower of Pisa but why did it get that way? This is straight from Wikipedia – “The tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the third floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-meter foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil,…

10/12/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean fail, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, the lean way consulting |

Today’s title was the phrase that was told to me when I first started in my lean journey during a transformation process. When going through a lean implementation there are two aspects we look at: 1) Technical and tangible aspectsa. Design elementsb. Schedulingc. Staffingd. And other tools 2) Non-technical and…

10/10/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, muda, mura, muri, the lean way consulting |

Many of us at are familiar with the seven wastes: TransportationInventoryMotion WaitingOver processingOver productionDefects Too many companies focus on just the above 7 when they are only 1/3 of the issues in a system. TIM WOOD is called MUDA. There are 3 elements that need to be addressed when making…

10/08/09 by Ankit Patel | company culture, lean, lean culture, lean fail, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, the lean way consulting |

Thank you to www.shmula.com for the photo and an interesting article why lean transformations fail. Thank you also to Henry Ford for the title of today’s blog post. The picture tells a very interesting story. 70% of transformations fail because of ourselves. We are are worst enemies when it comes…