Although I’ve spent my entire career working in the quality and process improvement fields, my undergraduate degree is in economics. I learned that economic cycles are normal. Economic downturns result when there is an imbalance in the economy. Past recessions have developed when businesses overestimated future demand and overproduced. When businesses realized their inventory was large relative to actual demand, they cut production and used various means to sell their excess inventory. Thanks in part to quality professionals implementing lean and other improvement processes, this source of imbalance is less common and less severe. However, as is now obvious, there are other ways to screw up an economy.

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