ABSTRACT
As an assessor for the Shingo Institute, Mike Rother has had the opportunity to visit many organizations that are motivated to transform their culture to achieve Enterprise Excellence. Some of these organizations are quite impressive and have made great strides. Lean can be defined in many ways, but above all, it is a system of learning and a system of respect. The ultimate purpose of lean and continuous process improvement is to develop great learning organizations with intention of delivering value to all stakeholders. The lean problem-solving methodology is divided into four stages: Plan, Do, Check, Adjust. At each step, there is an opportunity to reflect and learn using micro PDCA cycles. People and teams using a problem-solving routine learn as they attempt to reach new levels of performance and, most importantly, adjust based on what they learn in the process of trying to make things better. The kata community has exploded since Toyota Kata was first published in 2009.
