Bryan Zeigler has a great post on his “
Lean is Good” blog site. Titled “
Andon Calls and Muri,” he describes Toyota’s phenomenal capacity for responding to problems, and then takes us back to where the rest of us are with some really great questions:
If it is physically impossible to answer every andon call in order to [...]
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 to [...]
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 exploring a [...]
the very first thing to do if a machine starts producing scrap material is to shut it down. It is better to make nothing because that is a cheaper alternative than making stuff you can’t use.
Last week I
posted a story of a failed freezer, ruined food, and a customer support experience that could be summed up as “That’s how we do it.” I invited comments and asked:
“Is this a problem?”
And when I say “problem” I mean, is this a “problem” from the standpoint of the company’s internal process?
There are [...]
Whether in service delivery (including health care delivery), manufacturing, or any other production environment, your team members are likely having to make lots of decisions under perceived time pressure. Even with great visual aids, many of these processes are mistake-prone.
One of the reasons I like pre-kitting parts for a specific option configuration is that it [...]
My main desktop computer runs
Ubuntu Linux. The default email client is called
Evolution. A recent upgrade introduced a very cool feature. When I hit “Send” it looks for language in the email that might indicate I meant to include an attachment. If there is no attachment, it pops up this handy reminder:
Maybe Microsoft Outlook [...]
A couple of posts ago, I tried to emphasize “hypothesis testing” as the key, core thinking behind the TPS. For that matter, I think that anyone who truly understands any of the various improvement approaches out there will find the same thinking at the core. Certainly Six Sigma; Theory of Constraints; and TQM are all [...]
Following on from the buzz created by the last couple of posts, I would like to go back in time a bit.
In 2005 Steven Spear wrote a working paper called “
Why General Motors Lost and Toyota Won.” A reader can clearly the see emerging themes that were developed into his book
Chasing the Rabbit .
Spear [...]
Kris Hallan is a frequent contributor on the
LEI forum at lean.org.
In this post, he outlines some great experiences with trying to implement the “A3 process” in his organization.
Lean Forums – A3.
One thing that really drove home what goes wrong most of the time with the A3 process, and frankly, with most well-intentioned efforts [...]