Quotes About Efficiency

The critical first question for any lean transformation is: which activities create value and which are a form of waste? Once you understand this distinction, you can begin using lean techniques to drive out waste and increase the efficiency of the value-creating activities.

Why does stuffing one envelope at a time get the job done faster even though it seems like it would be slower? Because our intuition doesn't take into account the extra time required to sort, stack, and move around the large piles of half-complete envelopes when it's done the other way.

we think we can truly short-circuit the ramp by killing things that don't make sense fast and doubling down on the ones that do.

Even if the amount of time that each process took was exactly the same, the small batch production approach still would be superior, and for even more counterintuitive reasons. For example, imagine that the letters didn't fit in the envelopes. With the large-batch approach, we wouldn't find that out until nearly the end. With small batches, we'd know almost immediately.

We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination.

It does not matter how fast we can build. It does not matter how fast we can measure. What matters is how fast we can get through the entire loop.

the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.

At any time, the company could invest its energy in finding new customers, servicing existing customers better, improving overall quality, or driving down costs. In

This line of thought evolved into the Lean

Compared to a lot of startups, the Grockit team had a huge advantage: they were tremendously disciplined. A disciplined team may apply the wrong methodology but can shift gears quickly once it discovers its error. Most important, a disciplined team can experiment with its own working style and draw meaningful conclusions.

When people are used to evaluating their productivity locally, they feel that a good day is one in which they did their job well all day.

This is one of the most important discoveries of the lean manufacturing movement: you cannot trade quality for time.

which of our efforts are value-creating and which are wasteful?

Cuando vaya a crear su propio producto mínimo viable, siga esta simple regla: elimine cualquier elemento, proceso o esfuerzo que no contribuya directamente al aprendizaje que está buscando.

The Principles of Scientific Management,

This is true startup productivity: systematically figuring out the right things to build.

lean manufacturing, a process that originated in Japan with the Toyota Production System,

Lean Startup: the application of lean thinking to the process of innovation.

In 1911 Taylor wrote: "In the past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be first." Taylor's prediction has come to pass.

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer's problem.

From the point of view of individual efficiency, working in large batches makes sense. It also has other benefits: it promotes skill building, makes it easier to hold individual contributors accountable, and, most important, allows experts to work without interruption. At least that's the theory. Unfortunately, reality seldom works out that way.

When I work with product managers and designers in companies that use large batches, I often discover that they have to redo their work five or six times for every release.

Functional specialists, especially those steeped in waterfall or stage-gate development, have been trained to work in extremely large batches. This causes even good ideas to get bogged down by waste. By making the batch size small, the sandbox method allows teams to make cheap mistakes quickly and start learning.

In effect, the huge productivity increases made possible by modern management and technology have created more productive capacity than firms know what to do with.