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 [...]
A great key point comes out on page 124 of Toyota Kata by Mike Rother. …a Toyota person once told me to focus on the biggest problem. However, when I tried to do this I noticed a negative effect: We got lost in hunting for and discussing what was the biggest problem. When we tried [...]
I am in the process of (finally!) reading Mike Rother’s great book Toyota Kata. The book has already gotten great reviews out there, and I am not going to contribute a lot more to that dialog except to say I think it is the first substantial addition to community knowledge about TPS since Steven Spear [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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; [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]