Lean Roundup #58 – March, 2014

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of March, 2014.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.

My 3 Best Coaching Kata Mistakes – Michael Lombard shares lessons learned from practicing Toyota Kata.

Are you too busy to improve? – Hakan Forss explains what continuous improvement and innovation is all about.

What Does Leader as a Teacher Really Mean? – Al Norval explains what it means for a leader to be a teacher.

ASQ Influential Voices: Sports Industry Manufacturing – Chad Walters shares some thoughts on the challenges of growth and how they impact sports industry manufacturing.

WHAT IS “LEAN?” – Mark Rosenthal takes his stab at explaining what Lean really means by sharing Mike Rother’s view.

The People Formula – Gregg Stocker shares a basic formula for organizational development that shows respect for people.

ASQ Quality for Life Video: Lean In Sports – Chad Walters talks about how Lean and quality can have an impact on sports organizations.

Twelve Common Errors with Value Stream Mapping – Tony Manos shares from his experience some common errors people make when value stream mapping.

Lessons From the Red Bead Experiment with Dr. Deming – John Hunter explains that the value of the Red Bead Experiment is to provide focus to your thinking.

Strategy Deployment: Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey – Mark Hamel discusses strategy deployment x-matrices and the direction in which they should be developed…which is clockwise.

When management doesn't get it – Karen Wilhelm shares seven principles of change that help explain cross-cultural change.

How Do We Start with Lean? – Pascal Dennis answers the common question by explaining how to identify what problem you are trying to solve.

Right Sizing the Team – Linda Duvall explains how to build a team using the SIPOC (Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer) tool.

Is it Lean’s Fault or the Old Management System’s? – Mark Graban says we can’t blame Lean or a lack of Lean… we can really only blame the senior leaders.

When One-Piece Flow Restricts Capacity – Michel Baudin explains a situation where one piece flow can restrict capacity from Theory of Constraints (TOC) view.

Inventory Reduction: The Path to Supply Chain Management – Robert Martichenko explains how inventory reduction leads to waste elimination, problem solving and teamwork, and is critical to quality.

How a Problem-Solving Culture Takes Root -  Jim Luckman & David Verble suggest, based on experience, that traditional managers and executives focus on and practice three behaviors to help them personally make the transition.

Learning From Mistakes – Bob Emiliani shares a personal lesson on mistakes he made in executive training, what he learned from it, and how it resulted in improvement.

If you don’t have time to do it right first time, when will you have time to do it over? – Tracey Richardson discussed finding time for improvement.

Are you too busy to improve? – Focus on the system – Hakan Forss discussed how you can find time for improvement by focusing on the system.