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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.

Adding to the continued growth and diversity of the Center for Operational Excellence, specialty fashion retailer Nordstrom Inc. has become its newest member.

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.

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.

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.