Decision Making – AllAboutLean.com

(EN) Military Leadership and Disobedience

Oktober 11, 2025Oktober 19, 2021 von Christoph Roser

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, there was a disagreement on leadership favoring a much more authoritarian leadership style and stating „A general who asks his soldiers if they will fight, he is not yet ready for war.“ I disagree with this view, both for military and especially for manufacturing. Yet, this discussion inspired me to write two posts on the difficult subject of leadership. This first post here looks in more detail at military leadership, and the occasional need of soldiers to refuse, ignore, or disobey an order. A second post will look at what this means for manufacturing.

(EN) Cardboard Engineering – Alternatives

Oktober 11, 2025August 27, 2019 von Christoph Roser

Cardboard Engineering is a quick way to try out different configurations in reality. As the name says, this is done using cardboard. However, there are a few alternatives. Let me show you a portfolio of different ways to make cardboard models with (not only) cardboard, from ultra-cheap to very fancy. Please note that the fancier methods are usually not so well suited for layout optimization, but more for workstation optimization.

(EN) Cardboard Engineering – Workshop

Oktober 11, 2025August 20, 2019 von Christoph Roser

In my last post I talked about what you need for Cardboard Engineering. In this post I will show you how to do a Cardboard Engineering workshop. Spoiler: Keep in mind that the goal is not to just put something together but to try out different options (and I will repeat this a few times in this post). It is very easy to have fun with cardboard while learning very little about the problem you want to investigate!

(EN) Cardboard Engineering – Preparation

Oktober 11, 2025August 13, 2019 von Christoph Roser

Cardboard Engineering (CBE, sometimes also Cardboard Modeling) is in general the building of models from cardboard. These models are usually quick and inexpensive to build, but often not very durable. In lean manufacturing, these cardboard models are often workstations or entire assembly lines to test different concepts before building the whole thing in more expensive and time-consuming aluminum and steel. This allows faster and easier experimentation with different concepts to improve your production system.

(EN) How to Do Brainstorming

Oktober 11, 2025Mai 8, 2018 von Christoph Roser

A lot of lean is about problem solving, and most of these problems are complex and difficult. Otherwise, someone would have solved them already. Hence, I would like to introduce you to different creativity techniques for problem solving. Most of them can be used in groups to access the collective wisdom and creativity. Most of them are also suitable to develop a number of alternative solutions, of which you can pick the best ones (see my previous post on Japanese Multidimensional Problem Solving). Many of them can be combined in sequence. Let me start with the most common one, brainstorming:

(EN) Lies, Damned Lies, and KPI – Part 3: Countermeasures

Oktober 31, 2025April 7, 2015 von Christoph Roser

There is an inflation of key performance indicators (KPIs) in industry. In my last posts I have explained how KPIs are often wrong, and why bad and fudged KPIs are a huge waste. Yet, you cannot really run a larger corporation without KPI. In this post I will finally give some advice on (1) what you need to do to measure good KPI, and (2) how to avoid fudged KPI.

(EN) Lies, Damned Lies, and KPI – Part 2: Effects of Fudging

Oktober 31, 2025März 31, 2015 von Christoph Roser

Modern manufacturing works with a lot of performance measures, often called key performance indicators (KPIs). Unfortunately, they are rarely accurate, and often even intentionally misleading. In my previous post I described some examples of commonly manipulated KPIs. In this post I would like to explain the ugly consequences of incorrect or manipulated KPIs. In a final post I will also show some ways that you can reduce this negative effect. But first, how do bad KPIs (and hence most KPIs) hurt your company?

(EN) Lies, Damned Lies, and KPI – Part 1: Examples of Fudging

Oktober 31, 2025März 15, 2015 von Christoph Roser

Statistical measurements, usually called key performance indicators (KPIs) are found on pretty much every shop floor and in every company. Many management decisions are made based on KPI. Unfortunately, these numbers often are not reliable at all.

Mark Twain popularized the phrase „Lies, damned lies, and statistics.“ Winston Churchill famously said, “I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.” Hence, both men were wary of trusting numbers. You should be too!