by Patrick Adams | Mar 3, 2023 | Articles, Culture & Engagement, Lean Leadership
Growing up in West Michigan provided me with a landscape that was dotted with fields, farms, and silos. Silos were a necessity for the farms in my area. They provided a simple way for the farmer to keep crops and feed dry. Separation was a must and the silo provided a...
by Patrick Adams | Dec 2, 2022 | Articles, Change Management, Culture & Engagement, Lean Leadership
How do we best facilitate change within our organizations? Better yet, how do we initiate the right kind of change today? The answer is simple: Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese word made up of two distinct characters: One character means ‘change’ while...
by Patrick Adams | Sep 24, 2022 | Articles, Culture & Engagement
Ultimately, standard work is the foundation for continuous improvement because it provides a basis for evaluation. There is no way to know whether an improvement is truly an improvement if we don’t have a standard to compare it against. As Taiichi Ohno once said,...
by Patrick Adams | May 6, 2022 | Articles, Culture & Engagement
Let’s take a walk around your facility. What do you see? With a quick glance, do you know the status of the operations? Are you on pace or off pace? What problems do you see? What waste can you identify? Now, pay special attention to the people. Do they appear...
by Patrick Adams | Apr 15, 2022 | Articles, Business Transformation, Culture & Engagement, Operational Excellence
In my best-selling book, Avoiding the Continuous Appearance Trap, I identified 12 strategic questions anyone can ask to understand what’s truly underneath their culture. These 12 questions give anyone the ability to assess their operations and begin taking...
