Corpus Christi, Texas:
Hospital error blamed for more infant overdoses - Yahoo! News
Key points of the story are:
14 babies received heparin overdoses while in intensive care.
Two premature twins died, though it is unknown if this was the cause.
…pharmacy workers at Christus Spohn Hospital South made what the hospital called a "mixing error." The two [...]
This is a (belated) response to a post from Patsi Sells on The Whiteboard. She asked about safety and kaizen.
When first implementing some of the tools and mechanics of the TPS (especially in a manufacturing environment), many of the initial efforts seem to run afoul of the industrial safety professionals. My experience suggests a couple [...]
I have been in, or encountered, a number of organizations which had (or were working on) ISO-900x quality registrations. While I am fully aware of the intent of the ISO requirements, in the cases I have seen, the effect seems to fall well short of the goal.
On the surface, the types of processes mandated by [...]
My friend Tom poses an interesting question to production managers:
“If I ask you to produce different quantities and types of products every day, what quantity of people, materials, machines, and space do you need?”
Of course the answer is usually, at best, inarticulate and, at worst, a blank stare. There isn’t any way to know. [...]
As I promised, I am going to continue to over-play the afternoon my team spent with Steven Spear.
In his forthcoming book “
Chasing the Rabbit” (to be published in the fall), he profiles what is different about those companies which seem to easily be increasing their lead against competitors when there is no apparent external advantage.
One [...]
One question I see coming up a lot in various
forums is how to deal with issues unique to very long takt times. By “very long” I usually hear about many hours, sometimes days, occasionally weeks. Because it comes up fairly often, I thought I would take a shot at addressing it here.
I think the [...]
For kanban to work well, there has to be a solid foundation under it. That foundation is production leveling or heijunka.
Before I get to far into this, though, I would like to point something out: At the mention of leveling, people who are only just learning about kanban will point out all of the good [...]
The short story of assembly problems is lack of parts. Part shortages drive all kinds of waste, including: juggling the schedule; expediting; bigger lots or batches - and all of these things end up causing shortages later on in a self-reinforcing death spiral.
So how did an assembly shop which built about 10 units / day, [...]
Those of you who are familiar with Shingijutsu’s materials and teaching (or at least familiar with Nakao-san’s version of things) have heard of “The Seven Flows.” As a brief overview for everyone else, the original version, and my interpretations are:
The flow of people.
The flow of information.
The flow of raw materials (incoming materials).
The flow of sub-assemblies [...]
Warning to Reader: This piece has a lot of free-association flow to it!
Oops. A few weeks ago a story emerged in the press that a B-52 had flown from North Dakota to Louisiana with half-a-dozen nuclear armed missiles under its wing. The aircrew thought they were transporting disarmed missiles. This is a rather major oh-oh [...]