Bruce Hamilton

President, vice chair, teacher, change agent

Bruce Hamilton, president of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP), brings hands-on experience as a manager, teacher, and change agent. Prior to GBMP, Hamilton led efforts to transform United Electric Controls Co.’s production from a traditional batch factory to a single-piece-flow environment that has become an international showcase. Hamilton has spoken internationally on lean manufacturing, employee involvement, continuous improvement, and implementing change. Also, he has contributed to numerous texts ranging from visual control to variety reduction. Hamilton’s blog, Old Lean Dude, is an ongoing reflection on lean philosophy and practices, with an emphasis on keeping good jobs close to home.

Thu, 10/09/2025 - 12:02
Death by Efficiency Overproduction, like overeating, kills you one piece at a time
Wed, 02/13/2013 - 11:32
I was reminded this week how problematic the conceptual blind spots in our management systems can be. An otherwise insightful and passionate-to-improve organization that I was visiting was caught in a vicious production cycle that I’ll refer to…
Repetitive Madness Sometimes seemingly simple problems take years to remedy
Wed, 01/16/2013 - 13:45
My last column about superficial improvement may have implied that the condition is limited to organizations with deep enough pockets to buy pricey automation. There are also plenty of opportunities for superficial improvement in small shops. Here’s…
Superficial Resolutions Many organizations think they are making improvements when they are actually just automating waste
Tue, 01/08/2013 - 09:31
As we begin another new year, here’s a post about resolutions. In most organizations there are plans for something new in 2013—maybe a new product or market, or a new machine or facility. For those of us in the lean world, new also means re-new, i.e…
Too Happy, Too Soon Don't be mesmerized by early results
Fri, 12/21/2012 - 10:47
Our machine shop was assisted by Toyota Supplier Support Center (now called Toyota Production System Support Center) in 1996 to reduce setups on our CNC lathes. TSSC had already helped us in a downstream final assembly department, and now we were…
Accidental Revolution The payback can be huge when you invest in people, not just machines
Tue, 11/27/2012 - 09:35
Last week I visited with JVS, a terrific Boston-area organization whose mission is “to empower individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, and to partner with employers to hire, develop, and retain productive…
A Salesman’s Gemba Are your salespeople a part of your continuous improvement effort?
Thu, 11/15/2012 - 11:07
Bob was an outside salesman in from the field for a sales meeting at the plant. We asked him to stop by to participate with a problem-solving team assigned to one of his customers, ABC Co. We’d tried everything, so we thought, to correct a defect in…
A Better Class of Prisoner Also known as early challengers of the status quo
Fri, 10/26/2012 - 10:46
I attended a very nice presentation recently by a person who has been leading the lean charge for several years at a major medical center. As he reflected on key elements of his organization’s success, however, he made a statement that set off my…
Mental Muri Migraine Inconsistencies are a part of everyone’s workday
Mon, 10/15/2012 - 11:33
It’s funny, but when a bunch of lean thinkers gets together, they tend to be on the lookout for small improvements. Cumulatively these little issues give us headaches, and regrettably sometimes have far more serious consequences. Call this mental…
Lead With Humiliation ‘It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom’
Mon, 10/08/2012 - 12:28
Very early in my lean adventure as a new vice president of operations, when the idea of listening to workers was still a little strange, I returned from a week vacation to find that two of my peer managers had teamed up to convince the company…
Low-Value Idea or Shop-Floor Revolution? One simple fix can start an avalanche of improvements
Tue, 09/11/2012 - 14:38
Our Northeast Region Shingo Conference, held Sept. 25–26, 2012, is all about sharing information, ideas, problems, plans—all of those things that can make the sum of the parts greater than the whole. So a story about the power of sharing ideas seems…