Most teams run a pilot to prove a fix works. A better goal is to find what breaks while the change is still small. Here is how....

Once the cause is found, most teams take the first fix someone suggests. Here is how to list better options and choose between them....

Every crew can name its next failure. Almost none writes it down. What an FMEA is, how to fill in one row, and the rules that make the ranking honest....

Two lines moved together for a year and everyone knew the story. Nobody tested it. The four explanations behind any correlation, and how to test one....

Ask how long the work takes and you get minutes. Ask how long the customer waits and you get weeks. The 8 wastes of Lean, and why the biggest one...

A first good month is not an improvement. Hypothesis testing in plain words: how much does the process move on its own, and is this gap bigger than that?...

Every improvement list I have seen is honest. Almost none of them are decisions. A field note on the difference between ranking your problems and actually choosing between them....

Most cause analysis fails in the first ten minutes, when a plausible answer arrives early and the list of possible causes never gets made. A field note on casting the...

The problem you keep solving keeps coming back because you have been treating the symptom, not the cause. A field note on root cause analysis and the Five Whys....

Every measurement is the thing you want to see plus the error in how you saw it. A field note on trusting the ruler before you trust the number....

"We fixed it" is the easiest win to claim and the hardest to prove. A field note on the baseline: the before-photo every improvement needs, and how to take one....

A one-page Data Collection Plan decides whether your improvement data is proof or opinion. Here is what goes in it, and why teams that skip it measure the wrong thing....