Analysis paralysis is the act of bogging down a problem-solving effort by continuing to crunch data despite diminishing returns. Analysis of data is critical to problem solving. Without it, you are just guessing. But there comes a point where the effort stops paying off, and all it ends up doing is delaying any actual solutions. The biggest reason behind analysis paralysis is that people are scared. They are afraid to make a bad decision and Read more…
Here at Velaction Continuous Improvement, we practice what we preach. We continuously improve our website, and that often means deleting old pages. Sometimes we manage to remove all the old links. If you are here, it means we missed one. The content you were looking for is outdated, or something has changed, or we just thought it was time to retire it. Don’t worry, though. We probably have something better to replace it. We suggest Read more…
We want people to stay busy, right? Idle people are wasteful, right? In Lean, these are both false. I would rather see a person sit idle than just try to fill the time with busy work. Busy work masks opportunity. It is understandable that people do this. If they sit still, typically two things happen. The first is that their boss comes over and chews them out for sitting around. We’ll talk more about who Read more…
I grew up in Chicago. When it snowed, we had to get drifts over a foot to get school cancelled. At least that’s how the school-aged kid inside of me remembers it. But I do know that we had some pretty bad storms. During the storms, things shut down, then got back to normal pretty quickly. I also remember that we’d just finish digging out our driveways, and the snowplows would come by and bury Read more…
A shadow board is typically pegboard, often painted white, with a colored outline for the tool below each hook. Consider a tools storage setup such as this one. While it looks organized, it would be hard to determine which tool was missing if there was a blank space. So, what if you put outlines behind where the tools go? These are extremely useful in shops where tools are used for a variety of different tasks Read more…
An autoejector is a tool used to streamline production. It is also known by the Japanese term, hanedashi. In a cell where a single operator is running several machines, he will often work with multiple parts. That’s not to say it is a random number. There should be a defined number of pieces of standard work in process. Each automated machine will have an item in it, and the operator will also have an additional Read more…
Many people have fairly solid leadership skills. But those skills are put to the test in a continuous improvement culture. Typical leadership is not enough. The people in charge must exhibit improvement-oriented leadership. This simply means that they not only guide people to accomplish today’s task, but also have to consider how they will do that task better in the future. For many, the hardest part about changing the nature of their leadership style is Read more…
Producer’s risk is the chance that a good product or batch will be rejected by an inspection. It is also known as Type I error, or alpha error. It is the probability that a batch with quality that exceeds your designated acceptable quality level will actually be rejected. In technical terms, producer’s risk is the rejection of the null hypothesis when it is actually true. In deeper technical terms, the null hypothesis is the assumption Read more…
Quality Circles are a continuous improvement tool that was popularized in the US in the 1980s and 90’s but have since faded from common use. Quality circles are basically project teams that meet on a regular basis to take on quality issues in their work area. They tend to be staffed in large part by frontline employees in the work areas that are being worked on. Quality circles were in common use in Japan when Read more…
Processes are important for many reasons. They improve productivity. They make quality better. They improve predictability. They also help prevent chaos. Think about what happens when a driver chooses not to follow a process. We know that this can cause trouble if the violation is self-serving: speeding, running a red light, etc. But most people don’t realize that it causes problems even if the person is trying to be helpful or kind. When you try Read more…
I recently got a comment from an ex-subscriber that was not very flattering. While some of the criticisms were valid—I do have some issues with my download delivery processes—there was also an accusation that I was conducting false advertising. That bothered me, and I had a pretty quick reaction. But then I stepped back and thought about an old model I worked on for my book a while back. This model shows what happens inside Read more…
I teach a lot of problem solving tools. In fact, much of continuous improvement is just various forms of problem solving. Most of the tools are just standardized solutions to problems that most people face in their jobs. Take andon lights, for example. The first person who came up with the system likely saw that getting people to help at a workstation quickly was a problem, and probably went through several iterations to get what Read more…