Today, MAU President Randy Hatcher discusses how outsourcing can give your organization a competitive edge in the new year.

MAU Lean Manager, Mike Boettcher discusses Rapid Improvement Events (RIEs) and how they add to lean transformation and continuous improvement.

At MAU, we live safety! As our number one core value, safety and risk management is a main focus throughout the organization.

MAU Safety Manager, Rob Loose, shares a story about summer camp and skunks to remind us how to best eliminate hazards and live safety every day.

When implementing lean projects, where should you begin? MAU Lean Manager, Mike Boettcher answers that question with the 3 E’s.

In this testimonial, the Director of Logistics at Textron Specialty Vehicles (TSV) shares her experience working with MAU as an outsourcing partner.

For freedom-loving rebels, obeying rules is a behavior at odds with the attributes that make a rebel a rebel: willfulness, deviance, self-preservation and nonconformance. I’ll point out the obvious that rebels don’t do “conformance” well. Rules, on the other hand, require conforming behavior in the form of instruction that calls for unyielding compliance.

Linking your lean journey toward striving for operational excellence should be one of the organization’s key goals.

Workplace safety often makes us think of slips and falls or sprains and strains. We think of faulty ladders or electrical wiring in an industrial facility. Rarely do we consider an office environment, at which an employee spends the day in front of a computer screen typing away, as high safety risk.

You will probably agree that standardization is vital to the success of an organization, andthat standardization is truly fundamental within an organization in order to sustain operational excellence. After all, isn’t operational excellence the ultimate goal of every company that is on a lean continuous improvement journey?

Do you listen to classic rock?  I freely admit that I do quite regularly.  I love to hear Roger Daltrey of The Who bellow this probing question: Who are you?

When reviewing your “Lean System”, think about how well it can (or cannot) identify problems and then solve them. For example, if you want to continue to move your lean system forward, contemplate how companies can better engage ’Hearts and Minds’ of their front line employees.