Lean organizations make far more use, and far more public use, of statistics and charts than do other organizations.

That’s good.

Quite often, however, in fledgling Lean organizations the information is presented in a way that tells a misleading story, or tells no useful story at all. These “statistics” sometimes seem like cartoon versions of what mass production managers believe Lean statistics should look like.

That’s bad.

In the worst cases such information in the hands of bad managers can lead to decisions that make no sense and are extremely costly to the business. Let’s take a look at some statistics and charts to see how the same data, presented differently — different chart type, different time line, and analyzed differently — can tell a very different story from the one a mass production chart can show. Continue reading →