JIT and Lean Ops

Chili’s Benchmarking Its Top-Performing Restaurants

Chili’s, a casual-dining restaurant chain headquartered in the United States, has achieved an incredible turnaround.

Chili’s has 1600 locations worldwide. Same-store sales have increased for the last 20 straight quarters, and the company is now the second-largest casual dining chain in the United States.

In 2025, restaurants’ Average Unit Volume (AUV) was $4.6 Million, up from $3.7 Million in 2024, and from $3.1 Million in 2022.

Much of the successful turnaround can be traced to Kevin Hochman becoming CEO of Chili’s in June […]

By Ross L. Fink, Ph.D.|2026-06-17T20:39:55+00:00June 17, 2026|Tags: benchmarking, continuous improvement, process improvement, quality, strategy|

AI Cow Collars Enhance Productivity for Cattle Farmers

Halter’s high-tech AI cow collars are revolutionizing how farmers graze and manage cattle. The collars enable better usage of pastureland as well.

Traditional fences are replaced by sound and vibration signals that a farmer controls via an app on a smartphone. Fencing patterns can be changed with a click of the app, and ranchers can remotely manage their herds via GPS, with real time tracking of each cow’s location and health.

Video Spotlight:

How Halter’s virtual fencing […]

By Lisa M. Spencer|2026-05-03T09:01:25+00:00May 3, 2026|Tags: agriculture, artificial intelligence, farming, food supply chain, productivity, sustainability|

Moxi Nursing Robots Help Reduce Muda

Serve Robotics recently acquired Diligent Robotics in a $29 million deal, adding to its lineup of advanced robotic technology solutions.

Diligent’s Moxi hospital robots save nurses time and motion, increasing productivity and allowing them to spend more time by patient bedsides.

Video Spotlight:

These robots can help ‘tend to patients’ with nursing shortage, says Serve Robotics CEO (Jan 24, 2026, FOX Business)

This post is based on The Robot Report article, Serve Robotics to […]

By Lisa M. Spencer|2026-02-25T05:55:32+00:00February 25, 2026|Tags: artificial intelligence, automation, lean operations, muda, productivity, robotics, service design, time and motion study|

Nvidia-Intel Develop a $5 Billion Coopetition

Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel to co-develop PC and data center chips.

The Nvidia-Intel chips will be made using lean operations at Intel’s factory, to run custom-designed data center central processors packaged with Nvidia’s “AI chips known as GPUs.”

The partnership poses a threat to Nvidia’s current chip suppliers such as Taiwan’s TSMC, AMD, and AI chip developers such as Alphabet’s Google and Broadcom.

Video Spotlight:

Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel (Sept 18, 2025, AP)

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2025-10-12T21:13:12+00:00October 12, 2025|Tags: collaboration, competition, JIT, lean operations|