30 learnings from my LEAN journey

It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see - Henry David Thoreau Just a blink of a second, and you can make the right decision. Or not. It depends - it depends on many factors. One factor is experience. Not knowledge but skill.  We do not acquire skills by reading. We develop a skill by doing – that is where learning is coming from. We can experience that in math. To learn how to calculate the equation, we need to calculate them. There is no other way. My math teacher at high school taught me one method to solve any equation. That method is called: I look, and I see. The teacher told me: to be good at math, you need to do homework, you need to calculate many equations, many different equations. Then, after the time, you will get to the point where just by seeing the equation, you will immediately know how to solve it.  That is the reason why math teachers are good at solving equations. They solved thousand of different equations. They spend a lot of time practicing m

My favorite doctor is a dentist. I always look forward to the twenty minutes of torture on the dentist's chair. Just kidding - I hate it. I think everyone does. Maybe the dentist performing the routine likes it, and perhaps he does not like it too 😏 I mean, I can manage to be calm during the intervention. It, however, depends on the office equipment and the atmosphere. Being attached to the dentist's chair in the basement with no windows is a totally different experience than being in the dentist's office for children with colorful things and even cartoons on TV. Of course, it depends on preferences 👦 What happens during the visit to a dentist, and how is it related to LEAN? Everyone was at least once at a dentist's office. Being a LEAN manager, you would directly spot many things for improvement. However, that is not the point for now. Let's take a step back and focus on the basics. What work is performed at the dentist from a production point of view? When you e

What if I told you I know the receipt how to quickly orientate yourself when in production. What if I even give you that receipt. Will you take it? If yes, keep on reading 😊 Imagine you enter a production shop floor for the first time. What is the first thing you notice? How do you orient yourself in what you see? Those were my questions for a very long time. When I saw a production site for the first time, I was overwhelmed by machinery, materials, people. Sometimes it looked chaotical. Sometimes very clean and in order. So the first thing I started to notice was whether production was clean. Yeah, after a time, my focus was on 5S. In other words, whether the shop floor is clean and organized. However, I felt it was not enough. I knew I needed to be looking for something more sophisticated. Something more related to LEAN than just 5S. As you already know, I started to understand the production system after reading books by Shigeo Shingo. In my previous blog , I state that to understa

"To spend three years looking for a good master is better than to train for three years with a bad one." I got that advice when studying Aiki-Jitsu during my University time. Nowadays, I see the application of this advice in every field a person wants to get better. Why? For one simple reason - there is a lot of junk knowledge everywhere. So how do we know which master is a good one? We don't. At least not at first sight. When I encounter new knowledge, a book, or insights from the training, I always ask myself: am I able to apply that particular knowledge to the practice immediately? If yes, I try it, and then I decide whether the new learning is good. If I cannot apply the knowledge immediately, then it remains knowledge. You know the saying: Gemba is the best teacher. Applying a theory in practice is the best filter to differentiate whether the information sources are reliable. I read, on average, 18 books a year , plus some blogs and articles. And I very often do obse

The most important learning on my LEAN journey is not about the LEAN at all.  When I started to discover the real business world - just after University- I attended one Leadership training. It was that kind of „ tasting” training, which consulting companies do to attract people. I guess companies do it hoping people will buy a complete training. So, I did not expect much from it - and as you might guess - I also did not want to buy the training afterward. However, there is one learning that stuck with me for all those years. The learning worth more than the learnings I gather from many complete trainings I paid for. The trainer at one point said that the most essential tool of a successful leader is a dictionary . Not a translation dictionary, but a dictionary in one’s language. Weird, right? It seemed to me be weird at that time. Oddly, I kept reminding myself year after year without understanding why it was so crucial. Recently, I found out why. The paradox is that I realized that a

Writing is a craft. To learn to write in English, I want to force myself to write a certain amount of words regularly. And that is the main reason why I started this blog - to become better at writing.  All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. I am walking the path to becoming a LEAN Expert. There is still a long way to go; however, I already gained a few insights and learning that could make the path easier for someone else.  The biggest problem I face on my journey is a misinterpretation of LEAN management. To understand LEAN, I walked several paths that lead me to a dead end. By writing this blog, I want to assure myself  I am on the right path. I will share 30 lessons I learned when studying, practicing, and developing people in LEAN management. In the blog posts, you will find my personal opinions supported by key literature and practical examples.  Here is the shortlist of topics I will write about in this blog: - LEAN is not a lemon - Take me to Gemba - Learnin