One of the more famous tools taught by Chihiro Nakao of Shingijutsu fame is to direct the learner to observe an operation and “sketch the flows.” Another Time Ideas article by Anne Murphy Paul, How to Increase Your Powers of Observation, validates Nakao’s instinct. She makes the distinction between casual observation that we all do, [...]
I was driving home today and saw a construction sign on the sidewalk. It read: “Sidewalk Closed, Use Other Side.” Ahead was a section of the sidewalk which was, indeed, closed off and impassible. By the time a pedestrian encounters this sign, he is well into the middle of a long block. The sign is [...]
When you are at the gemba, you are watching the work. We like to say you are “looking for waste” and list seven, or eight, or ten different categories of waste that you are supposed to look for. I think it is simpler than that. An ideal workflow is smooth. The product moves smoothly, without [...]
On Monday MIT hosted a webinar with Steven Spear on the topic of “Creative Experimentation.” A key theme woven throughout Spear’s work is the world today is orders of magnitude more complex than it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Where, in the past, it was feasible for a single person or small group [...]
Note – this post was written pretty much simultaneously with a post on the lean.org forum. Mike Rother has put up a compelling presentation that highlights a long-standing misunderstanding about the purpose of “standards.” Some time ago, a (well-meaning) author or consultant constructed a graphic that shows the PDCA wheel rolling up the incline of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
This is Part 3 of a multi-part review. Part 1 is here. Before I get into it, I will break the rules of blogging and acknowledge a time gap here. I did finish the book shortly after I wrote part 2, in fact, I didn’t want to put it down. So now I am going [...]
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 [...]