Standard work-in-process (or Standard WIP, or SWIP) is the designated minimum amount of material needed to keep your Standard Work flowing. It is one of the three main components of Standard Work. The other components include balancing the work to the takt time, and assigning it to a single operator. Read more…
Waiting is one of the seven wastes first introduced by Taiichi Ohno, and still commonly used in modern Lean. Wait time is particularly bad because it consumes a non-renewable resource, and an important one at that: Time. Waiting occurs for a variety of reasons. People often wait for a machine Read more…
The term “birdcage” has two basic meanings in continuous improvement. The most common usage applies to when a work area encloses a person, trapping them inside. It is usually commonly applied to manufacturing areas where material racks and workbenches isolate a person, but cubicles act in a very similar way. Read more…
The waste of motion is one of the seven wastes attributed to Taiichi Ohno, the father of modern Lean. Motion is, simply put, moving more than necessary when doing work. It can be large motions, such as walking between work areas, or small motions, such as flipping a screwdriver over Read more…
Yesterday I read something I hadn’t heard before about a very well-known phrase. I heard that there are standard responses “Lights, Camera, Action.” That’s right. Each one of the words is actually an instruction that requires a specific response. I am pretty sure that most people know that when the Read more…
I was having one of those ‘Father Knows Best’ moments with my daughter yesterday. I was trying to explain to her why school is so important. One of my arguments was that the better you do in school, the better job you tend to get. Of course, she saw at Read more…
Tim McMahon and I recently presented a webinar full of tips that can help you really speed up your progress on your Lean journey. The tips include: Go to the Gemba Watch and Listen to What People Really Say Develop Your People Find Little, Instant Rewards Many Small Wins, Rather Read more…
Businesses are full of managerial approval loops. An employee wants to take a break, and he must check in with the supervisor. An employee wants to buy a hand tool, and she must go through channels to put in the request. A back-office employee wants to do something to take Read more…
I received a very interesting e-mail this morning from one of my readers regarding yesterday’s post on policy deployment. Here it is: Jeff: Have you started using some sort of speech-to-text software? There are several grammar/syntax errors in today’s post—and that’s unusual. As always, the post is full of good Read more…
I just read an interesting article that said the State of Indiana will no longer require their schools to teach cursive in class. My first response was more emotional than logical. I couldn’t believe that cursive writing is dying. It would be hard to imagine that my kids would not Read more…
At beginning of this year I decided to apply for the Shingo prize for my book Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean? Technically, the award is called “The Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award”, but most people just refer to the award as The Shingo Prize. Unfortunately, the steering committee Read more…
Well, with the right tools, and a better process, things get much easier. I am actually got a webinar recording posted on the same day that Tim McMahon and I presented it. Tim will be posting the slides up on SlideShare as well at some point in the near future. Read more…