Quotations for Lean Manufacturing and Continuous Improvement in Business
There are many experts on how things have been done up to now. If you think something could use a little improvement, you are the expert. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Waste is a tax on the whole people. ~Albert W. Atwood, How To Get Ahead: Saving Money and Making It Work, 1917
...a corporation is a living organism: that like a human being it goes through the three stages of life — youth with its strength; maturity; and thereafter, unless there is constant replenishment of vitality, the period of decline, and eventually the graveyard. ~A. B. ZuTavern and A. E. Bullock, The Consumer Investigates, 1947
Some of our greatest industrial organizations have learned their
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of Thrift is limitless. ~Thomas A. Edison, as quoted in T. D. MacGregor, The Book of Thrift, 1915
...it is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency fifty per cent. ~Walter Dill Scott, Increasing Human Efficiency in Business, 1911
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about? ~Henry David Thoreau, 1857
I don't spend more than 20 minutes a day in my office. I'm out in the plant. The people need to know why they are doing the things they do. And I need to know if they've got a better way to do it. ~Karsten Solheim
For he who rejects change is the architect of decay. ~Harold Wilson, 1967
The modern business man is the true heir of the old magicians. Every thing he touches seems to increase ten or a hundredfold in value and usefulness. All the old methods, old tools, old instruments have yielded to his transforming spell or else been discarded for new and more effective substitutes. In a thousand industries the profits of to-day are wrung from the wastes or unconsidered trifles of yesterday. ~Walter Dill Scott, Increasing Human Efficiency in Business, 1911
Eighty per cent of our business men are addicted to "nervous rush." But it does not spell efficiency. On the contrary, it means waste of energy, loss of time, more mistakes, a dull brain, and a "tired out" state of existence. The remedy is poise. ~C. D. Larson, 1912
The introduction of physics and chemistry have led to marvelous results in methods of manufacture and transportation.... by the proper application of psychology the efficiency of men is to be increased beyond the idle dream of the optimist of the past. ~Walter Dill Scott, Increasing Human Efficiency in Business, 1911
A question for the home commute: "Did I make some complicated thing simple today, or did I make some simple thing complicated?" ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. ~C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958
But, besides this and including this, she had trained herself to the utmost — she was always training herself... ~Florence Nightingale, "Una and the Lion," in Good Words, 1868
Never confuse movement with action. ~Ernest Hemingway
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. ~Abraham Lincoln, 1862
Here was a lesson in economics. And economics is simply the science of business, and business is the science of human service. ~Elbert Hubbard, "Let Thrift Be Your Ruling Habit," Loyalty in Business and One and Twenty Other Good Things, 1921
Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com