In my review of Toyota Kata by Mike Rother, I suggested that the staff-level practitioners who are embedded in almost every company that is “implementing lean” could put those practices to work immediately, even if it was not an ideal “top down” teaching process. This week I gave that a try. I was coaching a [...]
Many organizations have a centralized production planning function that would undergo a radical change in a transition to pull. I know many of you have experienced this type of organization, some have transitioned it. We have a fledgling exchange on the topic started in the discussion forum. I would like to invite more participation there [...]
This week I am coaching a kaizen team in the first phases of implementing a process to respond to problems on the shop floor. They clearly understand the objective, and are working hard. The key is to keep them focused on working out the problem response process vs. getting distracted by the production problems they [...]
Hello all – I am inviting you to take a look around and give me feedback on a community forum site I have put together. Right now there is no content – just a structure with categories, etc. These things are hard to get going as there needs to be a critical mass of participation. [...]
Over the decades, I have observed that it is quite common for organizational leaders to try to use the word “opportunity” when talking about a problem. I can understand the desire to do this – we typically think of “problems” as something to do with people. But I find the emphamistic language… problematic. [...]
Tom sent this link to me, and I thought I would share it. I can’t say much for the correspondent, but this is a decent view of a modern automobile assembly line. The actual tour starts at around the 6:00 point. When I look at a production line, one of the key things I am [...]
I suppose, at some level, that makes emotional sense. After all, the idea is to keep production moving. But the logical follow-on question is: “OK, so if the team member encounters aproblem that is going to force her to work around things, to do the work in a way that wasn’t planned, what do you [...]
I would like to thank everybody for a really engaging dialog in the previous two posts about 5S audits. Now I would like to dig in and look at what an “audit” is actually finding, and how we are responding to those issues. Our hypothetical production area is getting an audit. The checklist says things [...]
I have seen this topic come up in forums many times, and seen wide ranging responses. If I were to summarize them all, it would be “ I’ll know it when I see it.” A couple of weeks ago I heard a great quote from a co-worker that puts things into perspective. I’m always ready [...]
In the post on 5S erosion, I posed a couple of questions. What, exactly, is the function of a 5S audit? What, exactly, is the problem [the audit is supposed to solve]? How do you know [that is the problem]? What have you observed? The responses have been interesting, wide ranging, but so far have [...]