The Most Undervalued System in the Plant: Standard Work
You want to scale. You want performance to be consistent, predictable, and repeatable. You want to build a team that doesn’t rely on heroics or tribal knowledge. You want accountability without micromanagement. That’s the promise of lean manufacturing; streamlined processes, empowered teams, and consistent performance. But those outcomes depend on one thing more than most […]
The System Behind Continuous Improvement
When I reflect on my earlier career, I realize there were gaps in how we approached continuous improvement. At the time, I didn’t have the experience to see what was missing — but now, having worked with dozens of organizations across industries, the picture is much clearer. What makes continuous improvement actually work? The answer […]
Inside the DNA of Real Continuous Improvement
How can you tell if a company’s culture of continuous improvement is real – or just for show? In this video, CBS consultants Bob Morin, Steve Dowzicky, and Tim Mason share how they assess CI maturity on the ground. From leadership behavior to plant-floor habits, they break down the subtle signals that reveal whether a […]
Leadership Sets the Standard
A few months ago, I worked with a client that had done everything right — on paper. The leadership team rolled out a new continuous improvement system with clear goals, strong messaging, and full commitment. But something wasn’t clicking. When we visited the floor, it was clear: leaders weren’t present. The system wasn’t visible in […]
Why CI Efforts Don’t Last
Most organizations launch continuous improvement (CI) with energy. There are kickoff events, training programs, and leadership speeches about the importance of change. But six months later? Silence. The boards stop getting updated. The problem-solving cadence slips. The energy fades. And frontline employees go back to the way things were before. So what happened? The Hardest […]
Culture Eats Kaizen for Breakfast: Why Continuous Improvement Starts with People
The phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” is well known in business — and in manufacturing, it’s never more true than with continuous improvement. Because the truth is this: you can’t improve what you don’t culturally support. At CBS, we’ve seen too many companies launch lean programs, train their teams on kaizen events, and hang […]
The Strategic Supplier: What I Wish Every Executive Knew
There’s a lesson I learned in the late ’90s I won’t forget. I was running the supply chain for a telecom company during a boom cycle. Business was exploding, and like a lot of companies at the time, we were pushing hard—ramping capacity, driving suppliers to increase output, and betting big on our forecasts. We […]
Is Your Supply Chain Optimization a Strategic Advantage — or a Liability?
Most organizations don’t realize how much value they’re losing through their supply chains, missing key opportunities in supply chain optimization and digital transformation to drive operational excellence. I’ve seen it time and again: inventory that looks healthy on paper, but in practice, it’s either stuck, stale, or scattered. Metrics that are being tracked religiously, but […]
Measuring the Impact of Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement efforts can feel like a constant push forward, but how do you know if they’re actually delivering results? Too often, organizations focus only on short-term gains—cost reductions, efficiency boosts, or problem-solving wins. But true success comes from measuring the long-term impact and ensuring that improvement efforts don’t just work for a while—they stick. […]
Sustaining Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement isn’t a project—it’s a commitment. It’s easy to launch an initiative with fanfare, but keeping it alive is the real challenge. Over the years, I’ve seen too many companies treat improvement efforts as short-term fixes rather than long-term transformations. The result? They make progress for a while, then stall, and eventually slip back […]