As a small company, we are challenged to get new products to market fast enough to meet your needs. To combat that, we use the ‘better, not perfect’ philosophy at times. Instead of spending the time and resources to create a highly polished product, we record classes presented as a Read more…
QCD is the acronym for the broad categorization of metrics and KPIs in continuous improvement. The acronym QCD stands for: Quality: In most cases, this view of quality is “conformance to specification”, rather than grade. Cost: Cost, obviously, has a prominent role due to its close tie to profitability. Delivery: Read more…
An unlinked production environment is like an accordion. Some processes move faster than the average and some operate more slowly. As a result, parts move through the system at varying speeds, only to end up in piles of inventory scattered along the value stream. Even with a takt time in Read more…
There’s an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately, many office environments face a similar problem regarding balancing capacity and demand. Because the incoming workload fluctuates, it never matches a static capacity. This effect is compounded when work is assigned to individual employees rather Read more…
I’ve been reading a lot about the problem of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job lately, and I haven’t seen anyone address the real root cause of the problem. What has been mentioned at length is the fact that there are periods of radio silence. In those cases, Read more…
Everybody sees kaizen events as an opportunity to make an improvement. Most people also see them as an opportunity to train teams. But few regard them as a way to identify the future leaders of the company. Employees working in frontline production roles have limited chances to demonstrate their skills. Read more…
Stakeholders are the people that are vested in the outcome of something. They are not necessarily people who actually do the process, but they do have some skin in the game. Stakeholders that are indirectly affected by a process frequently have a negative effect from the change. In many cases, Read more…
In any job, you will encounter difficult aspects of the work. Lean companies are no exception. Fortunately, in a Lean organization, there are established methods for both dealing with the problem tasks, as well as for justifying the need to make the improvement.
People crave appreciation for their performance. They put a significant amount of effort into their jobs, and most people closely associate their personal value with how they feel they are perceived at work. There are many ways leaders show that they appreciate their team. In some cases, they display their Read more…
Lean requires commitment. It is easy to have that dedication when the philosophy has proven itself in the organization. But when the culture of continuous improvement is in its infancy, it is easy to lose one’s way. A common challenge that leaders have is resisting the urge to abandon a Read more…
I was surfing around the Kindle store the other day, and found a free download that looked interesting. It is no longer free, though. Sorry. The title might put some people off: Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders. To be honest, I have only skimmed over it Read more…
Over the last year or so, I’ve seen a rising belief that says financial incentives don’t work. There are even studies that reinforce this belief. One shows that when financial incentives are given for simple tasks, productivity can rise. But when the task is complicated, results can actually get worse. Read more…