Lean Blog Interviews — 372: Karen Gaudet on Lean at Starbucks and “Steady Work”

http://www.leanblog.org/372

My guest for Episode #372 is Karen Gaudet, author of the excellent book Steady Work, which was published by the Lean Enterprise Institute.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a former employee of LEI and they provided a review copy of the book.

In today’s episode, we discuss her experience with Lean at Starbucks. It’s a fascinating story that includes a transition from the old way (the Seattle HQ figuring out “best practices”) to a new way (where store managers and baristas were taught how to design “playbooks” and to continuously improve the way the work is done in a particular store).