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A continuous improvement culture is a shared value system that promotes the belief that what is good enough today is not good enough for tomorrow. Cultures do not change overnight. It takes time, patience, strong communication skills, and most importantly, trust between managers and their teams. A continuous improvement culture Read more…
Checkpoints, in the military, are used to track progress of a unit’s movement. In Lean, checkpoints can be used in a similar fashion. Checkpoints can be linked to specific process steps. When the sequence of work is standardized, the operator should hit those checkpoints with the same time remaining in Read more…
Checklists are in rather common use and the general concept of their use is understood by most. But they are commonly misused and there are multiple potential pitfalls with this type of standardization tool. Some checklists require the steps to be completed in a precise sequence; others, like a checklist Read more…
Capital expenses are the costs for fixed assets—the things that are typically carried on the books (reported on financial statements), last longer than a year, and provide recurring value. Buildings, vehicles, and equipment are typically capital expenses. Capital expenses hit the income statement in the form of depreciation. Your company Read more…
Capacity is the amount a given group, team, or individual can produce. It is determined by factors such as productivity, staffing, hours of operations, equipment limitations, defects/scrap, setup time requirements, number of shifts, equipment maintenance requirements, and a host of other factors. When does capacity become most important? As any Read more…
Buffer time, in project management, is the extra time added into a time estimate to keep a project on track. The purpose of this leeway in planning is risk management. It allows project managers to be able to account for unforeseen situations without having to change the coordination of a Read more…
The term “bottleneck” (capacity constraint) comes from the area at the top of the bottle that limits the flow coming out. It doesn’t matter how big the rest of the bottle is—liquid will only flow out as fast as the size of the neck will allow. That is stating the Read more…
Batches are groups of products that go through a process together. Batches work against the Lean principle of flow, because the first parts that are produced have to wait until the rest of the parts are completed before they can all move to the downstream process. Batches tend to drive Read more…
Bar charts are generally used to differentiate between the values of a parameter for buckets of data. The length of the bar shows the relative value of that data point. That just means that the bars represent a group, such as types of fruit in these examples, and the longer Read more…
One of the fundamental tools in any Lean toolkit is 5S. In a nutshell, it entails creating an organized, effective workspace that supports the processes being performed in the area. You Probably Already Use 5S at Home The original 5S terms come from Japanese words: Seiri (Sort): This step entails Read more…
Assumptions are pieces of information that are presumed to be true, often without any evidence to support them. In Lean, people often resist changes by presenting assumptions as fact. “Our customers will never go for that.” “We need all these parts, or the line will shut down.” “We can’t get Read more…