Yokoten Consulting LLC

 Yokoten means "the spread of good ideas" in Japenese. In one of his talks about Lean Management, Dr. Jim Womack mentioned that yokoten has no parallel in English. He found the word useful in his life-long journey to spread the philosophy of Lean Thinking. This resonated with me to the point I adopted it as the name for this consulting company. It was also a perfect match for what I learned from my wonderful mentors  in Lean Construction: Prof. Greg Howell and Dr. Glenn Ballard (founders of the Lean Construction Institute, and developers of the Last Planner System®). "Lean is a new and different way to act and learn in this world," stated Prof. Howell once.  Dr. Ballard advised against the attachment to "Lean Methods" because that makes the focus on origins and credit, versus whether the adapted and/or developed method fulfilled the lean philosophy and what improvement is needed. These are ideas worth spreading. This is what Yokoten Consulting aims to do for its clients thinking about Lean Construction and/or Lean Enterprise.