A recession is a good time for lean. Organisations can either postpone lean and resort to traditional cost cutting, or they can accelerate and redouble their progress with lean. I doubt the former will last the course. But the latter stand a good chance of surviving and laying the foundations for future prosperity as they turn the tables on their competitors.

I have been through Terminal 5 at Heathrow three times since it opened. Although in each case the plane was late arriving and leaving, the flow of passengers through the building is impressive. With no checked in bags it took me less than 10 minutes from standing up in the plane to driving away in my taxi, and not much more than that to get to the fate from the taxi when I left the day before.

The other day I was with a group of senior executives puzzling over an end-to-end value stream map. In this case it happened to be for an automotive component, stretching from raw materials to the car assembly line, but it could equally have been for many other products, such as medical devices supplied into a hospital. Surprisingly this was the first time these executives had looked at all the end-to-end flows involved in making this product. They were shocked at what it revealed.

We are all guilty of one of the greatest sins with lean - not having the patience to really understand the problem we are trying to solve and then jumping to a solution that may or may not be there right way to solve this problem. This results in lots of Muda - wasted effort that does not really make a difference - to your organization or to your consumers.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to look ahead to new challenges. One of the key challenges facing lean thinkers is to focus on doing the right things and getting the right results. In the past when I asked people why they are doing lean the answer was often "to eliminate waste" or Muda. Well and good - but now how much of the Muda being eliminated was actually low hanging fruit and how much effort was really going into eliminating the cases of this Muda in the first place?

Lean thinkers always take the time to reflect on what works and what does not. This yields very powerful insights. Some things really work as you expected and the results are evident for all to see. But other things you think ought to work just don't. In my experience this is often because we are reading what we want to see into our perception of what Toyota actually does. Once we realize that what they actually do I quite different from our initial expectations then we can begin to see the right way forward.

As much as I would like to, I can't walk frequently along every type of value stream. As a result, it has been a while since I've walked along the complex value streams shared by customer firms and their suppliers. So when several firms recently offered a chance to take multi-organization walks -- from the point of customer use back to the beginning of supplier manufacture -- I was delighted to put on my walking shoes and stride along with teams from the customer and supplier organizations.

I've just returned from India where I attended the first Lean Summits, in Mumbai and Chennai, organized by the Lean Management Institute of India (www.leaninstitute.in).

2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Model T Ford. This truly is "the machine that changed the world", even if the title of a 1990 book might suggest otherwise! Nearly 16 million copies were built over 19 years of production as the world was motorized.

How do we judge the progress of the Lean Movement? One critical indicator is our success in extending lean thinking to new industries and activities. In recent years I have been greatly encouraged that lean thinking is moving far beyond its origins in manufacturing to distribution, retailing, maintenance and overhaul, consumer services, construction, and - perhaps most striking - healthcare. Indeed, the latter may be the most energetic area of lean practice today.

Every day humans eat very nearly the same number of meals and sleep in the same number of houses and travel the same number of miles to work. All of these numbers increase slowly with population growth, but the number of us on the planet and our needs don't change rapidly.

I have a great stove, not that I cook that much. It's shiny, sophisticated, and full of capabilities, most of which I never use. I've been very happy with this brilliant object and its manufacturer for more than five years until the last few weeks when it needed its first repair.

What do the numbers 1/16, 4/04, 5/03, 5/30, 8/22, 10/23 and 12/20 have in common? They are the dates (day/month) that I sent out my e-letters in 2007.

For years I've visited companies where "respect for people" is a core element of the corporate philosophy. So I've asked managers in many companies a simple question. "How do you show respect?" I have usually heard that employees should be treated fairly, given clear goals, trusted to achieve them in the best way, and held to account for results. For example, "We hire smart people, we give them great latitude in how they do their work because we trust them, and we hold them to objective measures of performance. That’s respect for people."

Marcus Chao, president of Lean Enterprise China, describes the efforts of China’s auto industry to implement lean management, which is based on Toyota’s business system. He notes that many companies have not grasped the importance of lean’s fundamental elements, such as creating stability and having respect for people. Nor are they aware of the importance of the two main “pillars” of the Toyota system’s “house” – just-in-time and jidoka. Chinese managers have to understand that lean principles apply not only to production but also product development, customer relations, overall business management, and the supply stream. Managers also must spend more time on the shop floor observing actual conditions and encourage people to surface problems, not hide them.