“JUST ORDER MORE WIDGETS! I’D RATHER HAVE TOO MUCH AND KEEP THINGS RUNNING THEN NOT HAVE ENOUGH AND STOP THE LINE.” How many have heard something like that? I’d be very surprised if you haven’t. I was dealing with a materials guy who was held accountable on uptime, I know…
No Comments + Read Morehttp://www.leanblog.org/2009/12/guest-post-its-about-people/ Like many of you I first learned lean on the job in a manufacturing setting. Some of us have applied to areas outside manufacturing with pretty good success but there are things where it just seems like it’s not sticking with the people. So how do you convey the…
No Comments + Read Morehttp://jamieflinchbaugh.com/2009/12/sweat-the-small-stuff-it-may-save-your-life-guest-post/ Flying is the safest form of travel in the world and a safe takeoff and landing is arguably a true 6sigma process but accidents still happen. Did you ever wonder what were the causes? Believe it or not it is rarely 1 huge catastrophic failure like an engine dying…
No Comments + Read MoreI recently an article on how LG is going to outsource all their computer manufacturing. This is an interesting trend in the industry because all computer companies (Dell, HP, Apple) are moving from design and manufacturing to just designing the computers and just outsourcing the rest. What does that mean?…
No Comments + Read MoreThe last two posts I covered a couple of different ways to deal with different personality types. But there is another factor. People act differently in different situations. The personality tests usually indicate tendencies and not skill levels. If you and a surgeon are talking about how to improve the…
No Comments + Read MoreI want to talk about another personality profile test called the DISC test that is also helpful when influencing people during a lean transformation. So how do we use this information? D – Be very to the point and tell them the meat of the discussion. They will be more…
No Comments + Read MoreThe last post I talked about some different personality types. What does this mean to lean implementations? Well basically they all have different communication styles! The easiest person to adapt to lean will probably be your Integrator profile. They see systems and how to improve systems so they will probably…
No Comments + Read MoreYou might have heard lean is just as much (if not more) about cultural changes than tools. I 100% agree from everything I’ve seen but how many tools do we have to tackle cultural changes? From a tools stand point we have standard work, layered audit processes, A3s, etc. but…
No Comments + Read MoreI came across this great article in the USA Today on how Lean is helping manufacturing companies survive the recession. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2009-11-01-lean-manufacturing-recession_N.htm?csp=34 It’s pretty simple. Get rid of waste, empower your people, and keep changing to get better and you have a winning formula. Now thats a bit easier said then…
No Comments + Read MoreI was reading on how mayonnaise is judged and can you believe there are over 40 categories to measure how “good” a mayonnaise is! There are characteristic like color, shine, several dimensions of taste, etc. If you were trying to make the best mayonnaise possible would you try to get…
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