Mike Rother (born 1958, Michigan, USA) is an engineer, a researcher, teacher and speaker on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. He has been a member of the Industrial Technology Institute (Ann Arbor), the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (Stuttgart), and the Technical University Dortmund.
Rother is co-author of the Lean Enterprise Institute publication Learning to See, which introduced Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM is a tool for visualizing flows of material and information across multiple processes, so that individual process-level improvement efforts fit together as a flowing value stream, match the organization's objectives, and serve the requirements of external customers.
His latest book, Toyota Kata, is based on research into Toyota's managerial patterns. It examines the company's routines of dialogues and practices - called kata - that are used to make creativity, adaptation and innovation day-to-day experiences.