From the course: Lean Foundations

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The need for continuous improvement

The need for continuous improvement

From the course: Lean Foundations

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The need for continuous improvement

- I saw a cartoon recently on the lean.org website. It perfectly described the continuous improvement approach through the eyes of a lean philosophy. First, you see the classic scene of the optimist, smiling at the glass half-full, then you see the pessimist, frowning at the glass half-empty. In the final scene, the lean thinker is wondering why the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. He's thinking about how he can make that glass even better than it is right now. He's thinking about how he can redesign that glass so that half of it is not wasted. Lean thinking drives continuous improvement, and the lean technique that drives continuous improvement throughout the organization is Kaizen. Kaizen, which is a Japanese term, calls for small incremental improvements that are continuously made over the longterm. Kaizen is intended to be a pervasive mindset in which all employees are continuously looking for better ways of…

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