Kaizen is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “change for the good”. Many people equate this to putting together a team of people from several work areas to do a week-long project to reduce waste or improve a process’s flow. These projects may be called a kaizen blitz, a Read more…
The PDCA cycle is a structured problem-solving approach. It is also known as the Deming cycle, after Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the man credited with popularizing the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. The 4 Steps of the PDCA Cycle include: The plan step of the PDCA cycle entails setting objectives and gathering the Read more…
There is a news story circulating around about an airliner that missed its designated stop. The control tower tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane for 78 minutes. The plane ended up flying 150 miles past the airport before the pilots re-established contact and turned the plane around. It seems strange Read more…
A workaround is an unofficial or temporary fix for a problem. In effect, it is an admission that the issue cannot be immediately resolved, and a patchwork fix is put in place. Workarounds are not intended to be permanent fixes but have a tendency to be left in place longer Read more…
For many people, the term “Lean”, immediately brings to mind Lean manufacturing and images of the shop floor. While it is true that the origin of Lean certainly stems from these roots, continuous improvement principles have taken hold in the office, and are spreading at breakneck speed. The Lean office Read more…
Taiichi Ohno divided waste up into seven forms. Since then, there have been several other versions of the categories of waste (CLOSED MITT, for example). As a refresher…. The Categories of Waste Defects Overprocessing Transportation Motion Waiting Inventory Overproduction Why the Categories of Waste Don’t Matter Breaking waste into categories Read more…
The waste recording form is a simple tool for documenting waste during a process walk. The observer focuses on identifying the wasteful activities a person is performing and records them on the form. The form will usually contain a place to categorize the waste. Waste reduction is a large part Read more…
SMED means “single minute exchange of die”. It is one of the great enablers of Lean manufacturing for the simple reason that it reduces batch sizes. Simply put, when changeover takes a long time, a machine that makes many parts needs to run big batches all at once to be Read more…
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) is the founder of Ford Motor Company and the man most widely known as the inventor of the moving assembly line. While the first is true, the second common belief is a bit inaccurate. Ford actually popularized the moving assembly line; Read more…
Setup reduction is the act of lowering the time it takes to switch from one product to another. In a traditional manufacturer, the switching time (changeover) is long. As a result, if they do more than an occasional switch, they run out of production time. So, they produce long runs Read more…