Errors happen more often than employees admit, so smart organizations proactively encourage reporting while seeking to maximize beneficial learnings. This article looks at the balance that needs to be found between discouraging mistakes and learning from them. Combining error prevention and error management can be difficult. After all, while error prevention typically views all errors as unacceptable, error management emphasizes constructive responses .....more

It is not a crisis - at least not yet - but numerous Canadian SMEs need to get with the lean program before it's too late. The authors visited 18 firms and though they found that lean practices were wanting, they were able to turn their findings into recommendations that manufacturing managers everywhere can implement to make their operations lean.