Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
Darren left a great question in the Takt Time-Cycle Time post: Question… Which system is more efficient, a fixed rigid Takt based production line or a flexible One Piece Flow? In terms of designing a manual based production line to meet a theoretical forecasted ‘takt time’, (10 fixed workstations needs 10 operators), how do you …
Continue reading “It’s “What must we learn?” not “What should we do?””
While we lean practitioners seem to have earned a reputation of distain for high-speed automation, industries like mass production consumables, and the food and beverage industry, would not be viable without that approach. These plants are capital intensive, and the main focus of the people is to keep the equipment running. I hinted at some …
As I work in the field, I continue to encounter a desire to get right to optimal results – “Why aren’t we working to eliminate all of the waste?” Once people start seeing opportunities, there is a great temptation to try to simply engineer a new process and implement it. This is especially true in …
Continue reading “Organize, Standardize, Stabilize, Optimize”
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 …
Chapter 4 of The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership lays out the picture of a company where continuous improvement of operations is the primary focus of the management system. Note here that I said “focus of the management system” rather than “focus of the managers.” I believe there is a crucial difference which I will …
One of the graphics in Bill Costantino’s presentation really struck me, but my thought was out of context so I wanted to make a separate post about it. It was the concept of the “current knowledge threshold” illustrated here: As I interpret it, the red line depicts the “we know how to do this” area. …
Kata Coach Check Sheet (the “Delgado Chart”) Download Link (Right click, “Save File”) Study Guides Learning to Lead at Toyota – Study Guide and Facilitator’s Guide White Papers Getting the Most from Lean Consultants The Essence of Jidoka (as originally published in SME Lean Directions) Books The Lean Thinker’s Bookshelf on Amazon.com