Archive for November 2024

One core aspect of lean manufacturing is continuous improvement, or kaizen in Japanese. This concept emphasizes ongoing, incremental enhancements to processes, products, and services. Yet, there are commonly differences between how Toyota does kaizen and how the rest of the world does kaizen. These mostly relate to who does most of the kaizen activities. In…

Lean manufacturing is a great set of philosophies and tools to improve your production system, or for that matter any kind of operational system. Yet, many supposed lean implementations fail. One of the various reasons for failure of a lean project is a lack of attention to detail. Let me explain: Production Systems Are Highly…

Radu Demetrescoux has been a manufacturing consultant for 25 years and recently authored a Lean Toolbox (in French) with actionable details on 64 tools. He has seen the French manufacturing sector losing half its factories and is working to rebuild it. This is how he explains what happened and the way forward. It includes an…