Lean Roundup #190 – March 2025

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of March 2025.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.  

 

Toyota Raku: Respect for People, Comfort, Ease, & Ergonomics - Mark Graban shares his experience to a Toyota plant that focused on raku–making work easier, more comfortable, and more accessible for all team members–reinforces its deep commitment to respect for people.

 

If It’s Not Simple, It's… - Pascal Dennis says breakthrough should be as easy as continually making & easy quick experiments, most of them yielding a negative result.

 

How to Recognize and Remove Waste in Your Organization - Alen Ganic explains why learning to see waste is crucial for both individuals and businesses.

 

Legend – Bruce Hamilton shares the impact and learning from Dr. Shingo and his visit to Bruce’s Watertown, MA factory in 1989.

 

What if we could eliminate fear in the workplace? - Glenn Whitfield discusses the benefits of a workplace and what can be accomplished when we eliminate fear.

 

How to Grind Your Organization to a Standstill—Part 1 & Part 2 - Christoph Roser shares a sarcastic post on how to bring your organization to a standstill… not because he wants that, but so you can see what NOT to do to in order to improve your organization.

 

Has OpEx/Lean Gone Wrong? – Pascal Dennis says we must look outside the relatively predictable world of Operations, and into the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world of the customer.

 

How to Ensure Long-Term Sustainability of Operational Excellence Efforts - Daniell Yoon explores key strategies for ensuring the long-term sustainability of operational excellence initiatives.

 

In Order to Compete, You Need to Learn to Cooperate - Christopher R Chapman shares video regarding how the drive to compete adversarially has overtaken the ability to work cooperatively.

 

Hoshin Kanri as a Foundational Piece of a Lean Management System - Jeffrey Liker and John Shook explain that hoshin kanri is more than a strategic planning tool—it’s a dynamic, socio-technical process that aligns organizations at every level through shared purpose, problem-solving, and continuous learning.

 

Three Faces of Lean Management  - Jeffrey Liker urges the lean community to move beyond tools and templates because lasting transformation requires integrating lean’s technical, social, and scientific dimensions while developing people who can learn their way forward.

 

Why Great Leaders Share Responsibility Instead of Throwing Others Under the Bus - Mark Graban describes true leadership is about standing together, not standing apart when challenges arise.