Ann Moses of King County government (in Seattle) talks about a unique lean Green Belt program that integrates Racial Equity and Social Justice. As one of her IT Department’s lead racial equity trainers, when Ann received her lean Black Belt she saw a deep alignment and affinity between lean values and racially equity and social […]
Sheilah “Paddy” O’Brien recently finished writing her latest book, “Facilitating Rapid Process Improvement Workshops (RPI), a Self-Study Guide for Lean Leaders.” This is a follow-on to her first book, “Lean for the Nonprofit, What You Don’t Know Can Cost You.” She briefly outlines the content of her book(s), and, through a casual interview format, share her […]
Written by Brion
An interview was conducted at the Jan 2021 Happy Hour with Lean Portland. They invited John Ashcraft from Free Geek to discuss their Lean journey to increase their impact on the local Portland community. Their journey started in 2017, and at the end of 2020, they have almost tripled their output of refurbished laptops.
Written by Brion
Founders of the Lean Portland volunteer group held a call with other Lean and Six Sigma practitioners from Charlotte (NC) and Jacksonville (FL). They shared some background and a brief history of their group, along with recommendations for how others could set up their own volunteer group in their city. You can read the transcript […]
Written by Brion
The Oregon City Farmers Market reached out to Lean Portland for suggestions on how to offer their year-round market during a pandemic. As Lean Portland has experienced with other nonprofits, their goal is to remove waste and inefficiency in the process unrelated to building relationships, so that more time can be spent in conversation between volunteers, staff and […]
Written by Brion
Brion Hurley gave a presentation on how to improve employee engagement through structured management systems from Lean. The talk was given at the Deconstruction and Reuse Conference (hosted by Build Reuse) in Pittsburgh, PA. He shared experiences working with reuse nonprofit organizations like ReStore and The Rebuilding Center. He gave recommendations to organizations on how […]
Written by Brion
by Brion Hurley For the past 3 years, Lean and Six Sigma practitioners in Portland (Oregon) have been volunteering with local nonprofits to teach and mentor them on process improvement. The focus has been on environmental reuse nonprofits primarily. The effort gained traction due to beach cleanup volunteer project started by the IISE Sustainable Development […]
Written by Brion
by Brion Hurley Learn about the employee-led improvements taking place at reuse nonprofit organizations Free Geek and The Rebuilding Center, with coaching and assistance from Lean Portland, a volunteer Benefit company of Lean consultants in Portland, Oregon. Free Geek is working on a daily management system and trying to increase the number of laptops they are […]
Written by Brion
It seems like Six Sigma and profit go hand-in-hand. The methodology was designed around manufacturing, after all. When you hear terms like Lean or Kanban, you probably think of names like Toyota and Motorola (and recently, Amazon). You picture warehouses and forklifts and shelves stacked with products. Or maybe you think of service industries, like […]
Written by Brion
by Brion Hurley For decades, the methodologies of Lean and Six Sigma have spread successfully throughout many industries, from manufacturing, hospitality, banking, utilities, aerospace, automotive, entrepreneurship, and even entertainment. In addition, sustainability and social responsibility are also becoming popular approaches within organizations. Volunteering and fundraising are common ways that companies populate their annual reports, to show […]
Written by Brion