Growth becomes less important than stability; we have to give people changes slowly.

An expert is not someone who gives you the answer, it is someone who asks you the right question.

More importantly, our software worked. I don't just mean that it didn't bump, or that it performed according to the written specifications, or that it was efficient in producing reports. It really worked.

If the system should not need parts now, the worker should not produce because you are just absorbing instead of producing.

The problem with a cost reduction strategy is that there is a finite limit.You can only get to zero.

Every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple.

If you want people to take action,you must refrain from giving them the answers.

Every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit.

Make the bottlenecks work only on what will contribute to throughput today … not nine months from now. That's one way to increase capacity at the bottlenecks. The other way you increase bottleneck capacity is to take some of the load off the bottlenecks and give it to non-bottlenecks.

You need collaboration of its people; it's the only way to improve a company -- can you ignore that? You need a win-win for every sub-group, which will ensure exponential growth for a company.

Automation is good, so long as you know exactly where to put the machine.

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow.

I say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory.

The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expenses AND reduce inventories and increase throughput simultaneously.

Almost all decisions based on cost accounting are utterly wrong.

As a CEO, you have to take the active action to force most of your resources to stand idle from time to time -- or go bankrupt.

If we reduce batch sizes by half, we also reduce by half the time it will take to process a batch. That means we reduce queue and wait by half as well. Reduce those by half, and we reduce by about half the total time parts spend in the plant. Reduce the time parts spend in the plant and our total lead time condenses. And with faster turn-around on orders, customers get their orders faster.

An hour saved at the non-bottleneck is a mirage.

Conditions impact the behaviour of people.

To be a good manager, a manager tries to constantly fight to reduce waste.