“We are a job shop.”
“We never do the same thing twice.”
These are common truths spoken by people who are struggling with how to apply lean production principles to their operation. They want to do better, but don’t see how something that originated in the relentless repetition of an automobile assembly line can work for them.
This [...]
Today was traveling on behest of a large corporation, so the travel arrangements were made through them. It all went about as routinely as could be expected on the last weekend before Christmas… for me.
Unfortunately the guy I am supposed to meet here had flights going through D.C. that were on a collision trajectory with [...]
There is an interesting thread developing on the NWLEAN discussion group. Kris Hallan, a regular reader here, asked a great question about the contributions of the industrial engineering pioneers to what, today, we regard as “lean production.”
This, in turn, sparked some debate about whether Taylor, the Glibreths, and others were actually following lean methods; about [...]
“Sustaining the gains” is a frequent topic of discussion in the continuous improvement world. Often the discussion degenerates into a rant about “management commitment.”
But in the real world, people generally don’t sabotage improvements on purpose. (Though I have seen it happen, but only once.) The mechanism is far more subtle.
Before we get into what happens [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“Where do I start?” seems to be one of the most commonly asked, and most intensely discussed and debated, topic on the various discussion forums over the years. Yet a clear consensus hasn’t really emerged.
Normally I don’t wade into those discussions when the question is asked generically. The reason is that without specifics about the [...]
A couple of days ago I had an interesting session with an improvement team in a fairly large company. They have been working on this for almost 10 years, and believe that while they have made some spot progress, they are clear that they have spent a lot of money but not yet established what [...]
Not many people know that Amazon.com is one of the “places to see” if you are looking for companies practicing the TPS. The fact that their sales and profits are hitting records as most others are scratching and clawing to stay in business is telling.
This recent post by Kevin Kelleher on
Gigacom really sums the [...]
Grassroots Innovation: Business is Like Swimming, Not Running
Let’s take Greg Eisenbach’s totally on-target analogy and expand just a bit. Greg points out:
…a world class swimmer is only 9 percent mechanically efficient. This means 91 calories out of 100 in swimming are lost due to friction.
For the non-world class swimmer the best way to increase your [...]