Lean Blog Interviews — Remembering Norman Bodek

Norman passed away on December 10, 2020

http://www.leanblog.org/rememberingnorman

I’m republishing a “remastered” and commemorative version of Episode 1 of this podcast series from 2006.

I was incredibly saddened yesterday to hear that Norman Bodek passed away this week. Norman was 88.

This was announced through an email from Norman’s company, PCS Press.

Norman Bodek, famed as “the Godfather of Lean”, inducted into Industry Week’s and American Manufacturing’s Hall of Fame, published over 250 management books, taught at Portland State University, and created the Shingo Prize at Utah State University. He recently wrote “Leader’s guide for social responsibility” and this week published CEO Coaching by Kazuyoshi Hisano.

We should all be so fortunate as to be as energetic as Norman was in his 80s. He was an enthusiastic teacher and mentor, but he also had a hunger for learning that was impressive and inspiring.

He suggested that we do an “audio interview” series… that became this podcast and he was the first guest. He was the second guest… in fact, he appeared 14 times.

I’ve written some additional reflections — you can find those, share your own, and find links to all of his past episodes by going to leanblog.org/rememberingnorman

Republishing episode 1… remastered a bit. Boy, the audio quality wasn’t as good back in 2006… I enjoyed re-listening to this the other day. I hope you will too.