Lean thinking and lean manufacturing folk strongly recommend continuous improvement activities — kaizen — as a strategy for setting your firm on a path that will separate you from the competition. There is good advice available for manufacturing and service firms. There are also good books. But when I started a lens of Kaizen for Projects I found very little that was geared for organizations that continually reorganized staff as project teams. So, I've invited a group of kaizen experts who blog to join me for the first week in December to focus their writing and advice on project teams. Each day… Read on >>

Ready — Set — Kaizen Blog!
Norman Bodek

I will write a little about how to conduct effective meetings; then I will write about CEDAC a great group problem solving tool; standardized work – Toyota’s powerful improvement process; review the Kaizen Blitz process, and "The Missing Link," Quick and Easy Kaizen. Kaizen means continuous improvement. It also implies that every worker is involved and empowered to fully participate in continuous improvement activities – it means that every worker is recognized that they have important creative ideas to make their work easier, more interesting and to build their skills and capabilities. It also recognizes that as people participate in problem solving activities … Read on >>

Project Kaizen: A Co-Blogging Adventure
Joe Ely

This week, I’ll be joining six fellow bloggers to discuss one topic: How do we apply lean principles to improve the process of projects? How do we bring kaizen to projects?

All of us are deeply involved in continuous improvement. And while kaizen is reasonably well known (if not well practiced) in processes, it is very much unknown in the project setting.
There are four settings in which projects happen; each of them have a context in which we can improve them. On Tuesday through Friday, we'll discuss each of these settings. On Monday, we’ll all lead off with asking "why bother with kaizen?"… Read on >>

Introducing Kaizen for Project Teams
Jon Miller

I will join six other bloggers next week in tackling the topic of Kaizen for Project Teams. There are five themes, one for each day, on this topic.

Seven bloggers, 5 days, one theme, five topics, zero punches pulled. Check out their sites and look forward to some interesting posts, comments, and points of view. The plan is to collect all of the writing into a Kaizen for Project Teams handbook sometime in 2006. Join the discussion, and you could see your name in print… Read on >>

Next week: Co-blogging on Kaizen
Chuck Frey

Next week, I will be co-blogging with 6 kaizen and project management experts on the topic of kaizen and workteams. Kaizen, if you have never heard the term, is a Japanese-developed methodology for continuous, incremental improvement. Here's a wikipedia link, if you want to learn more about it.

This unique collaboration is being led by Hal Macomber, author of the Reforming Project Management blog (Hal did a brief bio sketch on me yesterday, which you can read here). Hal is announcing each blogger during this week, so I don't want to steal his thunder. But I can tell you that one… Read on >>

Great Week on Blog, Looking ahead to Next
Mark Graban

Next week brings a new feature. I'm participating in a "group blogging" effort on the topic of "Project Kaizen", or the application of lean principles and kaizen to the project world. This is being led by Hal Macomber and his blog, Reforming Project Management.
Other bloggers include:

• Bill Waddell from the Evolving Excellence blog
• Joe Ely from the Learning about Lean blog
• Norman Bodek from the Kaikaku blog
• Chuck Frey from the Innovation Weblog
• Jon Miller from the Gemba Pantaei blog

We'll each be blogging each day on a consistent topic. I'll provide links to their postings and hope you'll check back to see what we all have to say, and for you to participate through blog "comments." Read on >>

Crashing the (Lean) Party
Kathleen Fasanella

Hal Macomber of Reforming Project Management (I've been reading his blog forever, do consider subscribing) has organized a lean event among lean manufacturing bloggers. Every day next week, The Gang of Seven will be writing on the same topics. No, I'm not one of the seven because these guys are professional lean practioners and I'm just a factory-floor grunt and easily outclassed. Still, I'll be nipping at their heels from here and I'd encourage all of you to take the tour each day. Here is a listing of all the bloggers, some of them should be familiar as I've featured their work previously… Read on >>