«The Foundation of Success: Leadership's Role in Continuous Improvement»

I was on a job trip, where the return journey did not go according to plan.

The result was a missed air plane, and Hertz received a damaged car in return.

What really happened and what was the root cause?

Have you been to a meeting, and questioned the value of the meeting afterwards?

Maybe the meeting was relevant to some of the participants, but not to all of them?

Poor preparation may cause the meetings to last longer.

When and how do you respond to a result?

Do you use facts or intuition? Do your customers decide when to react?

Or maybe you use statistical process control?

How do you react? Do you start looking for a special cause?

I have experienced operators adjusting a machine in despair because the machine produced rejects.

No matter how much they adjusted, the machine still produced rejects.

The adjustments did not help, in fact it resulted in more rejects.

The best way to find out is to test! You can do that at the Norwegian museum of Science and Technology.

I did an experimental design where I tested age, gender and sense (vision and hearing). My brother in law (35 years), my son (10 years), my niece (7 years) and I (41 years) were volunteers.

Lean is all about flow.

I like smooth flow. It also applies to traffic. I do not like queues and unnecessary waiting.

The other day I experienced poor flow. Close to where we live there is a road construction.

I love to hear about people and businesses that succeed using Lean and Six Sigma. They practice the tools because of the value.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of visiting a former colleague, Iver Frøsli, who combines a full-time job with farming.

I am impressed by the flow at Espa Bolleland, a Norwegian gas station 90 km north of Oslo.

We often stop here, and we are not the only ones...

What's so amazing with Espa bolleland, is that besides all their visitors, you experience a good flow.