Very few people come to work with the intention of doing a bad job or doing the wrong thing. People want to be personally successful, and they want to be on a winning team. Unfortunately, many people operate in a vacuum of leadership. They have little idea how…
There is a general tendency of people to focus externally first when assessing problems. For example, they might start assessing a problem with sales by focusing on competitors or economic conditions.
The problem with that is that they…
Far too often, people rely upon gut feel and opinion to make decisions. Whether this is done by leaders directing their teams, or by groups of problem solvers working on their projects, the outcome tends to be the same: poor results.
A bimodal distribution is a distribution that has two separate and distinct peaks in it. A distribution of a data set describes the relative frequency of the occurrence of outcomes within each defined set of ranges. The term “bimodal” comes from the prefix “bi” meaning two. “Modal” comes from the term “mode” which is the most frequently occurring number. The shape of a graphed bimodal distribution can vary, but the most common is the double Read more…
One of the problems that we face in business is impatience. We want quick results when we start a new initiative. We want new processes to pay off immediately. As a result, leaders often choose less effective options that provide some return on investment quickly rather than more effective ones that take a while to develop into greater fruition. In large part, this is a function of the pressures of the stock market. Quarterly earnings reports force leaders to think in three month chunks of time.
Value Stream Mapping is an extremely powerful tool that gives an organization a unified understanding on how processes link together to form a ‘value stream’ that turns raw materials, components, and information into something that a customer wants.
While most Lean practitioners will instruct you to create the map with pencil and paper on the shop floor, there is a benefit to transferring that information onto a digital format that can be easily annotated, updated, and shared.
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Spend any time around Lean, or any other continuous improvement methodology, for that matter, and you will undoubtedly hear the term “Respect for People.” It is a simple concept that should act as a moral compass in how people do business.
Drum-Buffer-Rope is a production theory derived by Dr. Eli Goldratt in his book, The Goal. In it, he advocates production according to the pace set by a single machine (the drum) with linked production (the rope). He also promotes keeping a buffer in front of the machine that acts as the constraint on the system. Drum-Buffer-Rope is part of Dr. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints. This production philosophy closely mirrors the philosophy behind Lean. Drum=Takt Time Read more…
Setup is the process of preparing a machine to run a product. Some of the steps of a setup must be done while a machine is shut off. That is known as internal setup. External setup is when the steps to get the machine ready to run a different part can be taken while a machine is running. The terminology comes from the fact that these activities are done outside of or away from the Read more…
The 100-mile rule for meetings and projects is a mental tool for deciding whether to interrupt a person for a problem. In a nutshell, if the issue is big enough that you would call the person back to handle it if the meeting was a hundred miles away, it is OK to interrupt. If not, wait for a break or handle the problem on your own. One of the biggest personal challenges people face is Read more…
