Author Archive: Richard Schonberger
Richard Schonberger, Ph.D., is president of Schonberger & Associates of Seattle, providing seminars and advisory services to industrial and service organizations worldwide. He is author of over 170 articles and papers, a 12-volume video set, several books, including: Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement: A Deeper Look . . . with Telling Evidence from the Leanness Studies, Let's Fix It! Overcoming the Crisis in Manufacturing: How the World's Leading Manufacturers Were Seduced by Prosperity and Lost Their Way, World Class Manufacturing — The Next Decade: Building Power, Strength, and Value, Building a Chain of Customers: Linking Business Functions to Create the World Class Company, World Class Manufacturing: The Lessons of Simplicity Applied, Japanese Manufacturing Techniques: Nine Hidden Lessons in Simplicity. Among his current activities, Dr. Schonberger is director of The Leanness Studies, an on-going tracking of inventory turnover data for more than 1,400 companies in 33 countries, and an international benchmarking research project called World Class by Principles (WCP), with assisting research partners in leading nations globally.
A Lean Leadership Lesson from Marrakech
My wife and I are currently in Marrakech, Morocco, on one of our increasingly frequent trips to explore new locales. Truly a remarkable place, and with the tall snowcapped Atlas Mountains only an hour away in one direction, and the ocean in another, I’m convinced it’s destined to become another mecca for sports enthusiasts similar [...]
Start a Campaign for Clarity
Ambiguity. It’s an increasingly common space within which most organizations operate. Rapid change, increased complexity, and competing interests all make predictability and certainty tougher to achieve. But there’s a big difference between ambiguity that’s externally produced–such as not knowing the full impact of an upcoming regulatory change, or how quickly a key supplier will recover [...]
The Human Case for Lean
Over the decades, many people have tried to make the business case for Lean in an attempt to gain senior management support. They typically start with arguments based on removing waste or improving efficiency. But that, surprisingly, proved to be unconvincing to most executives. So they moved on to arguments such as improving productivity or [...]
Lean is the Strategy
Recently I wrote The Lean Turnaround: How Business Leaders Use Lean Principles to Create Value and Transform Their Company from McGraw-Hill, in order to pass on an approach to implementing lean in any company—something that has worked for me over and over for more than 30 years. I wanted to highlight the role and importance [...]
The Middle Manager Problem
It is common to hear senior managers say that the company’s Lean transformation efforts have been slowed by middle managers. They usually attribute this to resistance to Lean or a fear of change. Senior managers have perceived a problem (an effect) and identified two causes. Unfortunately, they have not identified the real problem and are [...]
Are You Humble Enough to be a Lean CEO?
“Oh Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble … When You’re Perfect in Every Way” Mac Davis If you’ve answered the question with, “Absolutely yes, I am a very humble leader”, you probably are not. But don’t get me wrong … humility, should not be confused with confidence. In fact, perhaps the two greatest assets a [...]
Just Observing
I’m a fairly simple and frugal guy, but there are three, maybe four, luxuries that I do indulge in. When I travel on business I just need a clean bed and I love Marriott’s Courtyard chain. When I travel on vacation I want more – and that’s why regular readers know I’m a Four Seasons [...]
Disruptive Management
There is an article on Financial Times called “Why Sony Did Not Invent the iPod“. If you don’t have a FT account don’t worry about it – the article is not particularly important. It is like countless articles and books that have flowed from the professional management cult, citing a Harvard wizard by the name [...]
Top 10 Signs Your CEO Doesn’t Get Lean
Lean training and programs are more popular than ever. Implementing lean strategies is all the rage, but has your CEO really seen the lean light? Use these 10 signs as a gauge to find out. 10. He initiated a brand new lean department. His thinking: Lean is something new. We don’t want to taint it [...]
Sustaining, Leadership, and Why?
A good friend of mine recently sent me a photo of what his team found while cleaning one of their production areas: Yes, that’s a certificate lauding completion of various 5S activities… except the last one: sustain. And from the mess in the background you can see what happened. Sustaining improvement – lean or otherwise [...]
