Month: August 2026

24 August 2026

Henri Fayol: The Mining Engineer Who Gave Management Its Grammar

In 1888, the board of a French coal and steel company called Commentry-Fourchambault had more or less decided to give up. No dividend had been paid since 1885. The metallurgical works were losing money. The coal seams at Commentry and Montvicq were running towards exhaustion.

14 August 2026

Five Steps, One Discipline: Making 5S Work Beyond the First Month

Most people meet 5S as a cleaning campaign. Someone paints lines on the floor, a photograph goes up on a noticeboard, and three months later the workshop looks the way it always did. That is not a failure of the method. It is a failure

5 August 2026

The Waste We See Is Rarely the Problem We Need to Solve

Find the waste and remove it. Teams map unnecessary movement, waiting, defects, excess inventory, and repeated approvals. These observations are valuable, but they can point us towards the wrong conclusion. Waste is visible, so it receives attention. The conditions that produced it often remain untouched.

Henri Fayol: The Mining Engineer Who Gave Management Its Grammar
by Vijay Allaham
24 August 2026
In 1888, the board of a French coal and steel company called Commentry-Fourchambault had more or less decided to give up. No dividend had been paid since 1885. The metallurgical works were losing money. The coal seams at Commentry and Montvicq were running towards exhaustion.
Five Steps, One Discipline: Making 5S Work Beyond the First Month
by Vijay Allaham
14 August 2026
Most people meet 5S as a cleaning campaign. Someone paints lines on the floor, a photograph goes up on a noticeboard, and three months later the workshop looks the way it always did. That is not a failure of the method. It is a failure
The Waste We See Is Rarely the Problem We Need to Solve
by Vijay Allaham
5 August 2026
Find the waste and remove it. Teams map unnecessary movement, waiting, defects, excess inventory, and repeated approvals. These observations are valuable, but they can point us towards the wrong conclusion. Waste is visible, so it receives attention. The conditions that produced it often remain untouched.
When Everything Changes, Learning Becomes Our Greatest Strength
by Vijay Allaham
25 July 2026
By Vijay Allaham, Founder and Managing Director, True North Lean Businesses today are operating in an environment where certainty is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Supply chains are disrupted without warning, customer expectations change quickly, costs continue to rise, and technology is developing faster than
Deming’s 14 Principles: A Management System Built on Quality, Trust and Continuous Improvement
by Surya Narayan
15 July 2026
Many organisations pursue improvement through new technology, ambitious targets, tighter controls or frequent inspections. Dr. W. Edwards Deming challenged this approach. He believed that lasting improvement does not come from isolated tools or pressure on employees. It comes from transforming the entire management system. Deming’s
Indian auto dealers turn to lean methods to cut chaos and win back trust
by Surya Narayan
12 June 2026
Indian vehicle dealerships and service centres are adopting lean management techniques to tackle chronic delays, rework and customer dissatisfaction, aiming to bring factory-style discipline to noisy, overbooked workshops and crowded showrooms. For many dealer principals and service heads, the scene is familiar: bays are full,
How to Draw a Process Flow Diagram Without Overthinking It
by Surya Narayan
27 May 2026
Most teams we work with already know their processes are messy. What they don’t always know is where the mess actually lives. A process flow diagram is one of the simplest ways to find out. You don’t need fancy software, a design background, or a
The Quiet Foundations of Lean: What Modern Manufacturing Still Owes to Juran, Deming, and Drucker
by Surya Narayan
25 May 2026
Walk into almost any modern factory today and you will hear familiar phrases. Lean manufacturing. Continuous improvement. Quality systems. Flow. Productivity. Just-in-Time. Bottom-up problem solving. These ideas are now so deeply embedded in industrial thinking that many assume they were always there. They were not.