How does kaizen actually show up on the bottom line?
This is a question that gets asked a lot, and honestly, we owe the asker a better answer than “it just does, trust us.” (Even though this is true.)
Here’s my thinking - it shows up two ways.
One is intangible. By that I mean it is incredibly [...]
How can some companies not only survive, but thrive when operating in “high cost labor” areas, while others are struggling even as they are busy chasing the lowest possible costs?
I would like to suggest that one key difference is the attitude toward people. On the one hand is the “people as cost” model. This model [...]
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The day today ended about 10 pm. It is 11 pm now as I write this, which translates to 7 am Pacific Time. I will leave the remaining time zones as an exercise for my European readers. (Hello, Corrie!)
Once we hit the shop floor today we were in “understand the current situation” mode. It turned [...]
I guess four months into this, it kind of makes sense to talk about waste. But rather than repeat what everyone else says, maybe I can contribute to the dialog and toss out some things to think about.
Identifying / Seeing Waste.
Taiichi Ohno had 7 wastes, a few publications say 7+1. I have always disliked trying [...]
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Operations that work to the “push” are well known for complex and interdependent problems. What looks like a problem in one area often has causes, or parts of causes, in other areas. Quality problems, delivery problems (late, too much, too little, wrong stuff), sub-optimizing attempts to reduce local cost.. all of these things propagate unchecked [...]
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
One very good idea-creation tool is “inverting the problem” - developing ideas on how to cause the effect you are trying to prevent. This is a common approach for developing mistake-proofing, but I just saw a great use of the idea for general teaching.
Ask “How could we make this operation take as long as possible?” [...]
I was in a popular “Gold Rush” themed restaurant the other night, and they were struggling with a new table assignment system.
In the past the system was very simple. When you arrived, you told them your name, the number in your party. They wrote your name on a list, and gave you a pager. They [...]
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The other day I wrote about the situations where I felt a 5 day kaizen event was actually useful. I want to add one more.. sort of. Actually I want to elaborate on “education.”
Sometimes in the early stages of an implementation, there are influential people who need to be won over. Now for those who [...]
Monday, September 24, 2007
To many people, 5 day “kaizen events” are the way to implement lean manufacturing, and the way to improves processes. There is another, larger, group which insists that “events” are only one method, but in actual practice, kaizen events are all they do.
At the risk of being branded a
heretic I propose there are two, [...]
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
We were at a business meeting and my coworker was waiting impatiently for his laptop computer to finish booting up. He and I were sitting next to each other, had identical machines, but I was already working. He made some comment about my machine booting faster for some reason.
But that wasn’t the case.
Here is his [...]