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by Ken Snyder, Executive Director, Shingo Institute, and Josh Howell, CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI)

As with us, we find that many people throughout the world are attracted to Lean[1] because of a desire within to make the workplace better – better for the customers, better for the workers, better for the leaders, better for the investors, and better for the community. We agree with Paul O’Neill that “Every person should have the opportunity to do work that gives their life meaning.”

We have not reached that goal – yet. The aspirational challenge presented by The Machine that Changed the World was to change the world by disseminating Toyota’s so-called “machine.” Yet today, the vast majority of organizations are not leveraging Lean. Even in our own Lean community, the question we get asked more frequently than any other is, “How can we get our C-suite executives to believe in and commit to Lean as the way to run the organization?”

A few months ago, at the invitation from Josh, leaders from six prominent organizations in the Lean community – Josh, Ken, Jamie Bonini from the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC), Bruce Hamilton from GBMP Consulting Group, John Toussaint from Catalysis, and Eric Olsen from Central Coast Lean – joined together to collaborate on how to accomplish the goal of changing the world for the better. We invited several other individuals prominent in the Lean community to join the conversation. It’s clear to us that we need to collaborate as a much broader community if we are to reach our ambitious goal.

To this end, we decided to jointly host a symposium on July 18-19, 2024, in Detroit. This will not be a typical Lean event. While there will be some speakers, most of the time will be dedicated to discussions within certain tracks. Discussions will include topics such as:

• How can we better demonstrate Lean’s benefits and engage C-suite executives?
• How can we reinvigorate Lean in academia through research and education?
• How can we evolve our thinking and practice as the world changes at an accelerated pace?
• How can we collaborate so that we can all get better together?
• How can we reach out better to bring more people into the Lean world?

This symposium is focused on building the future, and we invite you to join the discussion.

For more information about the symposium, visit the event website.

On May 21, Josh and Ken will share more about the symposium during the Shingo Institute’s monthly webinar.

Ken will share some of the goals he has in mind for this collaborative effort. Specifically, Ken will address topics such as:

• What did Shigeo Shingo teach us about the use of emerging technologies – such as AI – and the impact of those technologies on people and culture?
• What has the Shingo Institute learned from Shingo Prize recipients about the use of technology and culture?
• How does the Shingo Model inform these collaboration efforts?
• What collaborative efforts are already underway?

Josh will discuss topics such as:

• What motivated him – and LEI – to reach out to other leaders in the Lean community to launch this effort?
• What organizational trends does LEI see that require stronger collaboration across the Lean community?
• What experiments are already underway, and what additional experiments are needed?

We also plan to include time for Q&A, providing an opportunity for you to engage directly with us.

Please join us for this insightful webinar and be a part of the conversation on shaping the future of work.

Register for the webinar here.

[1] When we use the term “Lean,” we follow the definition from The Machine that Changed the World: “Lean … is ‘lean’ because it uses less of everything compared with mass production – half the amount of human effort…, half the … space, half the investment …: etc. See page 11.

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