Operations Improvement Archives - Page 4 of 4

Brew It Forward

By George Taninecz|2020-10-01T20:36:26+00:00October 24th, 2016|George Taninecz, Operations Improvement|Comments Off on Brew It Forward

By George Taninecz I’ve had the pleasure to know and support talented individuals who worked within the corporate and operations brain trust of Toyota, were guided by Toyota legends, emulated the practices of Toyota in their own companies, and/or devoted distinguished careers to studying and communicating Toyota concepts. One common denominator of continuous improvement appears in all of their work — a perpetual cycle of coaching and mentoring that over time creates a culture of problem solvers and change makers who seek to better themselves, their colleagues, and their organizations. Although I have never worked at Toyota — or, [...]

Gardening PDCA

The do phase of PDCA (plan/do/check/adjust) usually gets the most attention. Even if people don’t like change, they eventually get on board during the do phase and try to improve their function, process, or work activities. It often happens, though, that after changes are made, many move on to the next problem or opportunity and fail to follow the PDCA cycle to the check and adjust phases. For one activity that I annually seek to improve — vegetable gardening — I prefer the check phase. Each year in late November and December, I receive seed catalogs from across the [...]