Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor
In the world of science, great discoveries simplify our understanding. When Copernicus hypothesized that everything in the universe does not revolve around the Earth, explaining the motions of things in the sky got a lot easier. In general, I have found that if something requires a great deal of detail to explain the fundamentals, there …
In past posts, I have referred to an organization that implemented a “morning market” as a way to manage their problem solving efforts. Synchronicity being what it is: Barb, the driving force in the organization in my original story, wrote to tell me that their morning market is going strong – and remains the centerpiece …
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 …
… the teacher hasn’t taught. Do you regard the structure of problem solving as dogma, or as an experiment with a predicted outcome? If the learner struggles to master the structure, sometimes it is more valuable to find a different structure than to double down on what clearly isn’t giving the predicted result. The Problem …
Many organizations trying to deploy lean get great results for the first couple of years, then things tend to stall or plateau. This is in spite of continued effort from the “lean team.” We Still Don’t Have a Lean Culture This was the comment by the Continuous Improvement director of a pretty large corporation. They …
Sometimes people fall into a trap of believing they understand a process if they can successfully predict it’s outcome. We see this in meetings. A problem or performance gap will be discussed, and an action item will be assigned to implement a solution. Tonight those of us in the western USA saw the moon rise in …
“Time is the shadow of motion” is an observation usually attributed to Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, pioneers of modern industrial engineering. What they realized was this: You want to save time. But you cannot directly affect how long something takes. You have to look at the motions, at the process structure that is casting the …
I’ll admit right up front that the headline is worded to attract search engines. If that’s how you got here, be prepared to think. Can You Prove That This Works This is something I hear a lot: “I can see where _____ applies to your example. But my process is __(different somehow) ___. Fill in …
Over the years, I’ve been exposed a number of efforts to “implement A3 problem solving” in various companies. I worked for some of those companies, I’ve observed others. The results are nearly always the same. Here are a couple of examples. Let me know if any of these match up with experiences you have had. …
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 …