As I work with clients to get a “problem solving culture” embedded, one common challenge is the distinction between the short term work-around to remove the obstacle, and the long-term countermeasure that actually improves the process. I addressed this at a conceptual level in the “Morning Market” post a while ago. Last week I was [...]
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 [...]
I was in a conversation today and we ended up boiling 5S down to three key points: You have everything you need. You need everything you have. You can see everything clearly belongs where it is. Of course at the next level, these statements are the standards you are continuously checking against. Presumably we have [...]
Boeing’s “PTQ” (Put Together Quickly) videos show a time lapse of an airliner in production. They have been producing the for years – certainly since I was working there. This one, though, shows something a little special. When I first started working there, the idea of a line stop was unthinkable. The plane moved on [...]
In this world of laser beams and ultrasonic transducers, we sometimes lost sight of simplicity. Remember- the simplest solution that works is probably the best. A good visual control should tell the operator, immediately, if a process is going beyond the specified parameters. Ideally the process would be stopped automatically, however a clear signal to stop, given [...]
Hopefully that title got some attention. In Toyota Kata, Mike Rother frames a PDCA coaching process around five questions. The first three questions are: What is the target condition? What is the current condition? What problems or obstacles are preventing you from reaching the target? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could build a machine [...]
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 [...]
What is a few seconds of delay? Why is it such a big deal? Consider this example. While touring the Pilsner Urquell brewery in (surprise!) Pilsen, Czech Republic, we saw a lot of really good information boards, general organization, and a clear management commitment to continuous improvement. Their packaging plant produces 60,000 bottles of beer [...]
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 the last post I commented on Ron Popeil’s product development approach – to make the product easy to demonstrate drives making it easy to use, which creates more value for the customer. Let’s take the same thinking back to your internal customers. What if, rather than just writing a procedure, you had to go [...]