What did you learn in Japan?’ you may ask me, following my week there with the Lean Global Network (LGN) tenth anniversary ‘return-to-the-source (Toyota)’ trip in September. “How much time have you got? I might reply. There was a lot! Here are just some snippets. TNGA...

The lean transformation journey is the road less travelled. This is partly because it is not the easiest journey to undertake, but also because so many organisations lose their way, some even at the outset of their journey. There are however some organisations that...

What is your boss like? Is he or she demanding or easy-going? Does s/he listen well or is mostly ‘deaf’ to you? Is s/he wise or immature, open-minded or prejudiced, creative or unimaginative? These pairs of characteristics are just five of the sixteen pairs I used in...

Lean Institute Africa Chairman, Norman Faull, visited Gauteng Health hospitals Charlotte Maxeke (CMJAH) and Leratong last week. He had this to say about his time there: “It was an absorbing and inspirational few hours at each of these hospitals which are adopting lean...

One commonly hears that we live in an increasingly complex world. This has the implication that the work of management becomes increasingly difficult, because complex systems behave in non-linear ways. What “non-linear” means is that things do not continue to happen...

What games do you play? (I don’t mean chess or tiddlywinks, but games in support of your organisation’s lean journey.) I would love to hear from you about the games you have tried, those that you outgrew, those that you still use, etc. Also, what do you expect the...

The Lean Institute Africa (LIA) is experiencing increasing demand for its services to lean practitioners in Southern Africa and needs a person in the Cape Town office to support its business development. LIA is a not-for-profit company based at the Graduate School of...

I read somewhere recently that in the future there will be only two kinds of jobs: you will either give instructions to robots, or take instructions from robots.   It strikes me that if you exchange the word ‘robot’ for ‘artificial intelligence’ it becomes an even...

In February 2017, our CEO, Anton Grütter represented LIA at the CCBRT healthcare group in Tanzania. CCBRT (Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania) is the largest indigenous provider of disability services in Tanzania. The short video below will give...