You can observe a lot just by watching. — Yogi Berra
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 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 [...]
What is a few seconds of delay? Why is it such a big deal? Consider this example. While touring the Pilsner Urquell brewery in (surprise!) Pilsen, Czech Republic, we saw a lot of really good information boards, general organization, and a clear management commitment to continuous improvement. Their packaging plant produces 60,000 bottles of beer [...]
There was an interesting search in my logs today. [does a system have a single takt time or multiple] I always figure that if one person is looking, others are also curious, so let’s address it and maybe there will be a better search result for the next Googlenaut out there. Takt time is local. [...]
I was cleaning out some old stuff and came across a folded piece of paper with notes on it. They were from my parting comments to a kaizen event team that had put in a great week with spectacular results. They had started out wanting to improve the delivery of WIP to and from the [...]
We were down on the shop floor watching an assembly operation. The takt time was on the order of three hours. The assembler was new to the task, and the team leader periodically came by and asked if he was “doing OK.” The reply was always in the affirmative. As the takt time wound down [...]
5S audits, standard work audits, and for that matter ISO-900x audits, are a frequent source of questions in various online discussion forums. At the same time, the topic of “leader standard work” comes up frequently, as it did in a recent question / comment on “ Walking the Gemba.” I think the topic is worth [...]
This is Part 2 of a multi-part review. Part 1 is here. In my review of Kaizen Express back in May, I took LEI to task for two things – First, I didn’t feel Kaizen Express contributed anything really new to the body of knowledge. I would have been satisfied if it had more clearly [...]
In a previous post, I talked about Steven Spear’s observation about how a sensei saw a process and the problems. Jeffery Liker, Mike Hoseus and David Meier have done a good job capturing how a sensei teaches and summed it up in a diagram in the book Toyota Culture. (for those of you following at [...]
Now and then something comes across that makes it all worth it. And nothing is more “worth it” to me than to know something I said or did contributed to someone’s insight or impetus to do something spectacular. Yesterday Earl sent me an email that is one of those times. I was going to edit [...]