When Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was interviewed on NPR’s “How I Built This,” he revealed a valuable insight  — sharing and improving knowledge is hard work. 

At Dozuki, we’ve made it our mission to make Standard Work an industry standard.  We envision documented standards and worker knowledge continuously improving alongside one another—finally removing them from their respective silos. 

Lean operations and manufacturers have used Standard Work for decades, yet many companies lack clarity when it comes to this fundamental lean methodology.

If Santa Claus ran a toy company, he’d have the best lean manufacturing operations in the industry. A lean analysis shows that he delivers custom tailored products to every one of his clients; providing immense value. He is also able to accomplish this with minimal waste and able to adapt to shifting demands of the market, every, single year.

When properly applied, lean manufacturing principles cut costs by reducing waste and focusing on value. But many companies make the vital mistake of confusing cost cutting with lean thinking. To better understand the relationships between costs, waste, and value, we sat down with one of the foremost experts of lean, Dr. James Womack, to discuss the foundational elements of what makes lean thinking, lean.

If a proper culture of knowledge sharing is in place, the skills that experienced employees possess can be leveraged to improve your business and culture. Every manager knows that experienced employees are relied on more often than not. These are your go-to people, the rainmakers, the skilled superstars of your business. When you have a problem, they have the skills and experience to step to the challenge.

An effective lean culture aims to reduce waste and inefficiency while improving the value delivered to customers. The lean organization is a model that’s been historically applied to manufacturing, but many of the principles have something to offer businesses across a wide range of industries.

We spoke with Dr. Robert Maurer, author of “Spirit of Kaizen,” a leading expert in the field of psychology and organizational change, about Kaizen and the role of standardization in improving processes and creating an efficient culture of continuous improvement.

Six Sigma, Lean, and Quality Management are distinct approaches to reducing waste, defects, and providing value to the customer.

Employee on-boarding is often overlooked in the business world. We spoke with Karen Martin, author of "Value Stream Mapping" about why all supportive processes are equally important and how leaders can distinguish between process-level improvements and strategic, value stream improvements. 

The Dozuki book club is your go-to place for industry books and resources. Our team curates knowledge from industry experts, letting you identify key takeaways and start implementing solutions quickly.

These days, waste gets a bad rap.

‘Eliminating waste’ is such a common phrase among lean and six sigma practitioners, the two words are practically inseparable. The problem with this marriage is that it causes us to conflate all types of waste as equally harmful.

dThe Dozuki book club is your go-to place for industry books and resources. Our team curates knowledge from industry experts, letting you identify key takeaways and start implementing solutions quickly.

The Dozuki book club is your go-to place for industry books and resources. Our team curates knowledge from industry experts, letting you identify key takeaways and start implementing solutions quickly.

The manufacturing industry is a professional arena with an overwhelming variety of industry terms and acronyms. We’ve tried to make a list of the most common Lean terms before… we didn’t get very far.

The Dozuki book club is your go-to place for industry books and resources. Our team curates knowledge from industry experts, letting you identify key takeaways and start implementing solutions quickly.

We recently wrote a popular article about a major mistake at a nuclear waste facility. In short, we cited poor standard revision processes as the root cause of the mistake, costing the company $500 million to remediate.

Is your company interested in reaping the benefits of continuous improvement (transparency, efficiency, cost reductions, etc.) but aren't sure where to begin? Dozuki has you covered.

Fostering a culture of continuous improvement is a complex challenge that varies across industries. In the digital age, software solutions are starting to have a real impact on company culture. Yet it’s important to keep the advantages of software solutions in perspective.