Month: November 2025
PDCA vs PDSA: Deming’s Wheel, And Why Toyota’s Culture Makes PDCA Work
PDCA, PDSA, SDCA: a wheel of confusion if we are not careful. To PDCA or to PDSA? For decades, organisations around the world have been encouraged to adopt a simple, scientific cycle for improvement: PDCA. Or was it PDSA? And what about SDCA? Hang on a minute, my wheel is spinning. The confusion is…
Just-in-Time Is Misunderstood – let the supermarket fix that.
Just In Time is Never Just-Too-Little If there is one concept in operations that is consistently misunderstood, it is Just-in-Time (JIT). For many organisations, JIT has been reduced to a slogan: strip out inventory. For others, it goes further and condemns Lean, a fully thought-through operating system. These interpretations miss the point entirely. …
Lean and Six Sigma: Lessons from Arnie and The Predator
Six Sigma promised measurable perfection, Lean built enduring capability.
This article explores how Motorola’s and GE’s programme of defect reduction achieved results but lacked the system resilience of Toyota’s Production System.
Where Six Sigma sought control, Lean sought understanding, and that difference explains why one faded while the other endures.
Why the Toyota Production System Endures, and Why Few Others Come Close
The Toyota Production System has endured for nearly 70 years while other improvement programmes have come and gone. This article explores why — revealing the philosophical, operational, and human depth that makes TPS a living system of performance and learning.