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Even the best organizations don’t see outside their four walls sometimes, and those in search of the big picture often turn to value-stream mapping. As a tool in the lean transformation arsenal, value-stream mapping is a tried-and-true approach to finding bottlenecks, redundancies and other problems in the product or service’s journey to the end customer. What far too few companies realize, however, is that value-stream mapping can be a great catalyst for changing leadership behavior to support and sustain a lean culture.
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Adding to the continued growth and diversity of the Center for Operational Excellence, specialty fashion retailer Nordstrom Inc. has become its newest member.
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For most of us, the sigma level – or defects per million opportunities – for New Year's resolutions would be abysmal. We have 365 opportunities in a year to implement what we resolve to stick to and in reality, how many do we take advantage of? Whether it is skipping that dessert or going out for a run or practicing that hobby, rarely do we stick to our plan - but we keep complaining and hoping that we will achieve that goal. New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep.
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One of the greatest challenges organizations face is choosing among multiple alternatives for improving a product or service. Our Master of Business Operational Excellence students last week got a crash course in a great decision-making tool.
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Last year, COE talked to Fisher College of Business professors Aravind Chandrasekaran and Kenneth Boyer about fascinating new research they were preparing to publish about the health-care industry. That their work didn’t go unnoticed is an understatement.