While holiday shopping at one of my favorite food places, Johnson’s Popcorn, I came upon a scene reminiscent of our lean training video, Toast Kaizen. After I placed my order for 18 one-gallon buckets of caramel corn for friends and family, the Johnson’s kitchen shifted gears from mail-order sales to my takeout order.

I couldn’t resist capturing the teamwork on camera. Here it is, or at least one minute of it, the process that produces the world’s best caramel corn.

No doubt, this process, like any other, can be improved, but I wasn’t watching it for that reason. What struck me was that seeing the “process as a whole” is quite different than seeing the “whole process.”

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