Book Review – Lean Six Sigma and the Environment

In this episode, I share an interview with Dr. Yvonne Howze from December 2025. She specializes in Personal Mastery Leadership along with Organizational and Operational Excellence. She shares her remarkable journey from kindergarten lessons to becoming a nationally recognized leader in education, quality, and nonprofit improvement. With professional experiences spanning education, healthcare, tran...

In this episode, I share an interview with Patrick Adams, founder of Lean Solutions based in Michigan. We met virtually during the pandemic in the Lean Communicators Network, and later in-person at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference. He hosts an annual conference called Lean Solutions Summit that will take place in a few weeks Continue Reading

In this episode, I share an interview with Sammy Obara, Founder and Senior Partner at Honsha, a consulting firm made up of former Toyota employees. He recently presented a topic called “Kaizen without Borders” at the 2025 UCSD ProcessPalooza, and I invited him on the podcast. We discuss applying these powerful concepts to NGOs and Continue Reading

In this episode, I share an inspiring interview with Dr. Lucas Chesla, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with Value Added 616, and founder of the nonprofit, Full Armor Ranch. In a world where continuous improvement leads to transformative change, he stands out as a master in blending Lean Six Sigma methodologies with meaningful purpose. Continue Reading

In this episode, I share a webinar I gave to the ASQ Lean Enterprise Division I share examples of how Lean tools like process mapping, 5S, and Kanban boards helped improve efficiency and effectiveness for nonprofit organizations focused on societal or environmental challenges. I also share my favorite real-world examples from the City of Denver, Continue Reading

In this podcast, I share a presentation that was Part 1 of a 2-part sustainability webinar series sponsored by Iowa Sustainable Business Forum and Iowa Lean Consortium (part of CIRAS). It was geared towards introducing those in sustainability roles to Lean methods, which have become some of the most popular improvement methods used in high-performing Continue Reading

In this interview, I talk with Katie Anderson, a leadership coach who has extensive lean experience in healthcare, and author of the award-winning Lean management book, “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn.” She lived in Japan for many years, where she learned directly from John Shook‘s former manager, Isao Yoshino, and the book is a Continue Reading

In today’s episode, I interviewed Tracy O’Rourke, who has over 20 years of process improvement experience, working with nonprofits, government, education, military and the for-profit sector. She teaches Lean and Six Sigma at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), is the co-host of the podcast and video series, Just-in-Time Cafe (with Elisabeth Swan), and is Continue Reading

Our guest is Hugh Alley, an experienced lean practitioner and industrial engineer, who has experience with the Toyota Kata method of improvement. He has recently applied this approach to a nonprofit food bank in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada called Loaves and Fishes. This approach was based on the KataLab approach developed for the food Continue Reading

In this podcast, I talk with Brad Jeavons, lean and Agile consultant with SA Partners. He is the host of the Enterprise Enterprise podcast. An episode we did together for his podcast will be released soon. Brad and I got along great, as we have similar passions around sustainability, the environment and social issues. During Continue Reading