Improving your processes by implementing lean tools is always a nice idea, but in the end it should also benefit the company. This article describes a few financial measures and ratio´s, and the link between lean improvements and these measures.
The goal of this article is for the reader to gain understanding of this link between lean and financial results, so that future improvements (or kaizen events) can be planned based on today´s financial statements of the organization. These improvements can then be used as input for the strategic alignment process (x-matrix during the hoshin catch-ball process).

In the Toyota Production Development System, James M. Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker explain how Toyota can develop a new car in 15 months while their competition needs at least 24. From this book, we learn that Toyota does more than Lean manufacturing, they also have Lean Product Development System (LPDS). In this book, the authors describe 13 Lean development principles, divided in three categories: people, process and technology, which are necessary to be able to deliver customer value.
This article will discuss each of them shortly.

In this article, Dan Markovitz describes the importance of slack in an organization.

Overloading people with work leads to a lack of time for reacting on emergencies, reflecting and innovating.
Without slack, you cannot built a organization of continuous improvement!

The sixth building in the fortress of change is the MONASTERY OF REFLECTION AND FOCUSED GROTWH. Within the name, two important aspects of continuous improvement are captured: focused growth and (self) reflection, or hansei. Focused growth refers to having a clear direction in which you would like your team to improve to (Rother, 2010). This direction starts with having a vision and the cascading of this vision into KPI and behavioral indicates (as described in the Gate of Purpose).
Next to having a clear direction, only when people in the organization take the time to reflect on the past actions, improvements can be implemented (Liker, 2004).

In his book Office Kaizen, William Lareau describes a lean model which helps eliminating waste in an office environment. For me, the most interesting part of the book describes the different types of waste Lareau describes, the non-value adding activities that prevent flow. Lareau defined this list of wastes, because many people find it difficult to translate the traditional 8 wastes to their office environment.
In this article, I will describe 9 different types of office waste for which all employees can are responsible and four types of waste that result from a lack of leadership, for which responsibility lies more with management.
We will start with the first group of wastes, of which I describe three of the categories Lareau describes: human waste, process waste and information waste.

Managers as Mentors describes the four phases of an evolving coaching relationship (surrendering, accepting, gifting and extending). Understanding these phases can help any mentor to be more effective.
The foundation for a good mentoring conversation is the relationship between the mentor and his or her protégé. The largest part of this book therefore describes ideas to improve this type of relationship, so that both parties can learn.
Among others, this article describes the 4 steps of creating a bond, 4 steps for advising your protégé, 4 techniques for asking questions and 4 methods of showing that you have really listened and understood to your protégé.

´Death by meeting´ is a short fable about a company that designs virtual golf games. The owner of the company is a famous golf player and therefore has great knowledge on golf and which leads to super innovative and profitable products. Even though the sales figures are going through the roof, it turns out the management team is not as engaged and passionate about their work as before. When the company is bought by a bigger organization that then sends over an external manager, it turns out the problem of this lack of energy can be found in meetings.
Fortunately, there is the intern Will, who has studied at the film academy and can improve the meetings of the organization while constantly making references to the movie industry.

For most managers, they are the most time consuming activity there is: E-mails. For some, they arrive in hundreds per day, with the simple result that the owner of the mail box can no longer keep track of what is important and what is not, let alone know how many actions are requested of them in the many E-mails.
MS Outlook is a fantastic tool which is used in many organizations as standard Mail software. It contains a lot of possibilities, some of which a lot of people are not aware of. This article describes most of chapter 18 of my book Lean Transformations (Panneman, 2017) and includes a few personal tips on how to deal with E-mail in an effective and efficient manner.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is one of the most important lean tools, used to improve the flow of materials and information. What a VSM is and an introduction in the VSM symbols is already discussed in the article: ´Value Stream Mapping´. This article focusses on the 8 steps of designing a Future State VSM which are described in the book Lean Transformations (Panneman, 2017). I will use an example factory, the lighter factory, to guide us through the different steps.
This article builds on knowledge about the following topics: VSM, Pull Production (one Piece Flow, FIFO ‘& Supermarkets) and Heijunka.