Standards and The Lewis & Clark Expedition
July 10, 2014
Hosted by Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
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Episode Description
When does standardization fail? Is its real purpose a uniform and static outcome? Or is there a more dynamic result? In this week’s show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (visual expert and your host) shares her view that standardization provides us with a platform for discovery—a jumping off place for the next iteration. We are mistaken if we take a standard as an unalloyed good. If we do, our pursuit of excellence is short circuited. The goal of excellence is not a static replication of the current definition of good. In the same vein, we are sometimes surprised to learn that the Japanese educate their children in the art of discovery: how to think. Not where to find the answers but how to find them. This is exactly what Shigeo Shingo demonstrated when he sat in front of a machine for five months in order to discover the first pivotal steps in quick changeover. Tune in this week as Gwendolyn contemplates the commonalities between the Lewis & Clark Expedition and our modern pursuit of excellence.
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Business Channel
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak offers the best in practical tools, methods, and strategies for improvement leaders who want to apply workplace visuality and harness its remarkable cultural and bottom line contribution. Visuality: you can’t get to excellence without it.
Each week, award-winning author and foremost visual workplace expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, targets new learning and applications through a range of formats, case studies, interviews with business leaders and topic experts.
Whether yours is a factory, hospital, military depot, bank, office or dry cleaners, get informed, get inspired, get visual.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, PhD, is president and founder of Visual Thinking Inc. and The Visual-Lean Institute(r), a training, consulting, and research firm in visual workplace technologies. Over a period of 30 years, Dr. Galsworth has codified the field of visuality into a single coherent framework of thinking and application called the 10-Doorway Model.
In 2005, Dr. Galsworth established the Visual-Lean(r) Institute where in-house and external trainers are licensed in nine core visual workplace courses.
Four of her nine courses are now available as on-line training systems (English/Spanish), with more to come. Galsworth is author of seven books, including two Shingo Prize winners: Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking and Work That Makes Sense, available from her website and Amazon.
Dr. Galsworth began in the 1980s as the head of training/development at Productivity Inc. She worked closely with Dr. Ryuji Fukuda to adapt the CEDAC(r) method for western companies, and with Dr. Shigeo Shingo to develop, among many things, poka-yoke for the West. She was principal developer of Visual Factory, TEIAN (operator-led suggestion systems), and the X-Type Matrix.
A Fellow on the Shingo Institute Faculty and former Baldrige and Shingo Examiners, Galsworth has led study missions to some of the world’s finest companies, including in Japan. Dr. Galsworth lives in New England where she happily works, hikes, and writes.
