11/04/09 by Ankit Patel | lean culture, lean manufacutring, the lean way consulting, usa today |

I 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…

11/04/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean manufacutring, the lean way consulting |

I 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…

10/30/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean manufacutring, the lean way consulting |

Many companies have already started lean but I think many people might ask “Are we lean?” You might measure “being lean” on how much waste is removed. To be truly lean 100% of the waste form a process has to be removed and the reality is that there will always…

10/14/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, standard work, the lean way consulting |

Most everyone knows about the leaning tower of Pisa but why did it get that way? This is straight from Wikipedia – “The tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the third floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-meter foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil,…

10/12/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean culture, lean fail, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, the lean way consulting |

Today’s title was the phrase that was told to me when I first started in my lean journey during a transformation process. When going through a lean implementation there are two aspects we look at: 1) Technical and tangible aspectsa. Design elementsb. Schedulingc. Staffingd. And other tools 2) Non-technical and…

10/10/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, muda, mura, muri, the lean way consulting |

Many of us at are familiar with the seven wastes: TransportationInventoryMotion WaitingOver processingOver productionDefects Too many companies focus on just the above 7 when they are only 1/3 of the issues in a system. TIM WOOD is called MUDA. There are 3 elements that need to be addressed when making…

10/08/09 by Ankit Patel | company culture, lean, lean culture, lean fail, lean manufacutring, lean transformation, the lean way consulting |

Thank you to www.shmula.com for the photo and an interesting article why lean transformations fail. Thank you also to Henry Ford for the title of today’s blog post. The picture tells a very interesting story. 70% of transformations fail because of ourselves. We are are worst enemies when it comes…

10/06/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, lean manufacutring, root cause, the lean way consulting |

Like many of you I’ve been hearing a lot about the health care debate and it got me thinking. Now I know there are many sides to the problem but I think the one question we have to ask ourselves is “What’s really the problem?” When I think about it…

10/04/09 by Ankit Patel | lean, poka yoke, poke yoke, the lean way consulting |

Well maybe not divine but it sure does help you from making those “human error” mistakes. Ever heard of Murphy’s Law? “Any thing that can go wrong will go wrong.” In short if something has the possibility of happening, it will happen. You can only flip the coin on heads…