Friday, November 16, 2007
If you are planning on attending (or sending people to) a
Shingijutsu Seminar, I have a word of wisdom: Prepare.
Just sending people cold and expecting great things from the experience will, at best, give you a fraction of the potential learning. At worst it can turn people off completely. Here is a little advice:
Read my [...]
Thursday, November 15, 2007
This last road trip was 3+ weeks in China, then a week at the
Shingijutsu seminar in Japan. It was a little fortunate for me since I was the only member on our team who was not suffering from 8-12 hours of jet lag.
As I noted at the start of the Shingijutsu Seminar series, Shingijutsu [...]
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Friday was a visit to the Toyota Museum in the morning and the “1 hour tour” of the Tsutsumi assembly plant in the afternoon.
Toyota Museum
If you ever get to Nagoya, the Toyota Museum is superb and definitely worth a visit. Even if you have no interest at all in lean manufacturing (so why are you [...]
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Today was the final report-out. In these events this is quite ritualized. Each team has a takt time, and must present a standard work combination sheet that shows the flow of their presentation. Everyone must participate in the presentation. There is a general set sequence for what is shown first, second, third, etc.
Because we only [...]
Saturday, November 10, 2007
The last post was a bit of a narrative, and I think it is appropriate to call out a few key points and express them succinctly.
The theoretical stuff all emphasizes “initial process stability” as a requirement for progress. Ohno said “without standards there can be no kaizen.” Mark says - “Without parts there can [...]
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Yesterday I told you the plan for today. Here is what really happened.
We got the even pitch going for a while. I was at the front of the line releasing units down the line as the pre-build Team Member was done with them. I was watching distance (since distance = time on a moving line). [...]
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 [...]
As I mentioned in the last post, this is the third time I have been through one of these events. The first time was in 1998, then again in late 2000, now in 2008 - so it has been a while. As you may or may not know, the company that was
Shingijutsu back in [...]
Saturday, November 3, 2007
I hopped over the water this morning from Beijing to Nagoya. More about that later. But I can say it is just a bit of sticker shock to travel from one of the least expensive places to one of the most expensive places in the span of 2 1/2 hours. Ah, the miracle of jet [...]