Ideas into Action Blog

Lean and Systems Thinking

The development of the Toyota Production System was strongly influenced by systems thinkers, including Shewhart and Deming, and systems concepts are inherent in most lean tools.

If we define an organisational system as a group of interacting elements forming an adaptive entity, then it becomes clear what I mean. The lean philosophy is that we should organise by Value Stream and a Value Stream is quite clearly an adaptive system consisting of interacting elements. Furthermore, all the lean tools are designed to bring these interacting elements (for example activities in a process) closer together in order to improve flow.

Posted by Ross Maynard on Wed, 22 Sep 2010   read more...

Lean Accounting podcast with a British accent

Lean Accounting podcast with a British accent ! - http://business901.com/blog1/rapid-decision-making-enabled-thru-lean-accounting/

Posted by Ross Maynard on Tue, 21 Sep 2010   read more...

Three Minutes on Lean Service - Audio blog

Click here for my three minute introduction to lean in a service environment - http://play.goldmail.com/yflv20cbfvcv

Posted by Ross Maynard on Thu, 2 Sep 2010   read more...

Three Minutes to Lean Accounting - Audio blog

A three minute introduction to lean accounting. Click here - http://play.goldmail.com/ms7wfrosvn19

Posted by Ross Maynard on Thu, 2 Sep 2010   read more...

A New Approach to Standard Cost ?

Standard costing worked in the 1920’s where mass producers could sell everything that they made and had very low product variability; but it gets impossibly complex in the modern environment where we have differing customer demands; high product variability; and competition means we rarely sell our full productive capacity.

Posted by Ross Maynard on Wed, 1 Sep 2010   read more...