Steven Spear

Articles

• Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System   view details
  "Any improvement to processes, worker/machine connections, or flow path must be made through the scientific method, under a teachers guidance, and at the lowest possible organizational level."

• Leadership and Innovation in a Commoditized World   view details
  "And that is the essence of what a leader has to do in any innovation driven organization. Not tell people what to do but constantly challenge them to identify challenges and obstacles, investigate their source, develop and test solutions, all the time as

• Focus on Discovery, Not Decision-Making, Is Key To Success   view details
  "The challenge is devising a new approach to managing systems so complex that 'thinking our way' to adequate, let alone perfect, designs is impossible. We are now in an age in which management must instead focus on constant discovery and innovation – relentlessly learning better ways to do work and learning that there is better work to do.

• Operational Excellence: From Fragmented Vocation to Principle-Driven Profession   view details
  "Be it lean, six sigma, lean six sigma, business process excellence, reengineering, or TPS, the common objective is creating substantial and sustainable competitive advantage by managing the internal operations of organizations—across the spectrum of development, design, and delivery—to create exceptional differentials in performance across the dimensions of quality, cost, reliability, responsiveness, security, and agility."

Author Quotes

• Toyota's real achievement is not merely the creation and use of the tools themselves; it is in making all its work a series of nested, ongoing experiments, be the work as routine as installing seats in cars or as complex, idiosyncratic, and large scale as designing and launching a new model or factory.

  View details

  Learning to Lead at Toyota

Web sites

• Lean Edge
  "Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners). ... The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."
• Steven Spear
  Five-time winner of the Shingo Prize for research excellence and a senior lecturer at MIT and former assistant professor at Harvard. A senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, he is the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and trade publications, including the Harvard Business Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.