One year in retrospect and my blog’s second anniversary

In these last days of 2015, here is the year in retrospect and my blog's second anniversary. On December 28th, 2015, my blog counted 271 posts. There is only one reblog, so 270 posts over two years are mine. 2015 saw 90 new posts published, roughly one every four days. I thought I was more …

5 reasons 5S make the world a better place

5S is usually seen as very basic, simple methodology, easy to get through. The reality is totally different and most companies fail to implement a significant and sustainable maturity level of 5S. For those not familiar with and wanting to learn more about 5S, check my Quick Beginner’s Guide to 5S. Here are 5 reasons …

Going the extra mile

Going the extra mile is an idiomatic metaphor for describing an extra effort to please a customer. It may sound like a management legend until experiencing it. My little story could have been a scenario base for a Hollywood Christmas movie, but it was only my experience as a stranded Frenchman in Great Britain. With …

6 questions to frame your brilliant development idea

I was fortunate to interview Eli Schragenheim, well-known expert of Theory of Constraints, during his visit in our offices in Paris, October 2015. This interview is about the 6 questions to challenge, question, test or frame any new development of technology, product or service. These 6 questions are: What value does it bring? What current …

What is Little’s law? What is it good for?

Little's law is a simple equation explaining how Waiting Time, Throughput and Inventory are related. Wait Time = Inventory (or WIP) / Throughput Here is a video about Little's law: Fine, what is Little's law good for? Well, if a process lead time is too long, chances are that work-in-progress (WIP) is too high. For …

Eli Schragenheim on How can Theory of Constraints help Startups?

Startups are hype. I started asking myself how long known methodologies or management philosophies like Lean or Theory of Constraints can possibly help starting companies? When Eli Schragenheim visited our offices in Paris, France, in October 2015, I fetched the opportunity to ask him this question: How can Theory of Constraints help Startups? In this …

How can Theory of Constraints help Startups? Introduction

Startups are hype. I started asking myself how long known methodologies or management philosophies like Lean or Theory of Constraints can possibly help starting companies? In this series, I'll try to answer this question. Eli Schragenheim on How can Theory of Constraints help Startups? When the renown expert Eli Schragenheim visited our offices in Paris, France, …

Your next bottleneck is elsewhere (and in the future)

Theory of Constraints provides the five focusing steps, an iterative improvement process which aims to focus efforts on the sole system constraint (often a bottleneck). These five steps are: Identify the constraint (bottleneck) Exploit the constraint; improve capacity utilization Subordinate all non-constraint resources to the constraint Increase the capacity of constraint if relevant Repeat step …

How Lean can help startups – Introduction

This post is an introduction to a series of articles dedicated to Lean and start-ups, more specifically: how Lean can help start-ups. Lean was revealed as “Lean Manufacturing” before spreading to virtually all business sectors and evolve to Lean Management. Lean has long been seen as an approach (approach or philosophy) specific to existing businesses …

The origins of Logical Thinking Process

The Logical Thinking Process is the name of a book from Bill Dettmer as well as the name of a complex problem solving process inspired by Goldratt's Thinking Processes. Over time, while teaching the original Thinking Processes, Bill realized it can also  be used for strategy deployment, not only complex problem solving. In this video …