So, the story about stray jet-the plane that missed its stop and was out of contact for 78 minutes-continues to unfold. The latest CNN article now reports that the pilots have said that they were both distracted because they were using their laptops in the cockpit during that time. One 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…
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…
In the last few months, I’ve seen several speed traps set up in schools zones where multiple police officers line up and systematically pull over a steady stream of drivers. Now, I’m not in the car with those drivers, but I would bet that most of them aren’t intentionally trying Read more…
I’m a fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Recently Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (the ‘Hero of the Hudson’) was a guest on the show. Jon Stewart brought up a part of Sully’s book (Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters) where Sully had mentioned that his copilot had Read more…
So, it is a Sunday morning, and the outlook for today is bleak. You see, it is the bye week for my favorite football team–the Chicago Bears. I can handle the wait from the end of the season until the first game of the next one, but giving me a Read more…
There is a theory called collective intelligence that says groups of people are smarter than individuals. Let’s look at a simple example of how this works. Imagine I listed the names of several states up on a board, and asked a room full of people to rank order the states Read more…
Just a quick tip today. Part of being successful at Lean is in developing a bag of tricks that you can reach into when a given situation presents itself. So, what do you do when you see an operator spin a product around (or lean over it) to check something Read more…
Lean is successful in large part because of its focus on the customer. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the concept of value. Value Stream Maps and the practice of distinguishing value-added and non-value added activities both immediately come to mind. ‘Voice of the customer’ (VOC) also helps Read more…
The Lean community learns a lot from each other. Two forward thinkers that I follow pretty regularly are Mark Graban of LeanBlog.org and Ron Pereira of LSSAcademy.com. A little while ago, Mark posted an article on Lean certifications, and mentioned that he was biased against them. Ron has the opposite Read more…
How much do you think it would cost to take pictures at the edge of space? You might guess tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’d be wrong. With some basic problem solving skills and a little dash of creativity, your price tag would come out to $148. Read more…
I have to admit I am a fan of seeing what Google puts up on its site. I like seeing the creativity. So, I have to ask the question, is this a joke, or is this a quality problem? (I grabbed this image at about 11:20ish PST, 9/26/09) I’m leaning Read more…