Off the Shelf

The tools, machines, software, or other resources you use to do your job fall into two basic categories. The first type is the most common and contains “off the shelf” resources. The second category includes custom built or highly modified tools, equipment, or even software. Off the shelf items tend Read more…

Delivery

Delivery is one of the legs of the QDC (quality, cost, delivery) acronym. It is a very simple concept—to get paid, you have to get your product to your customer. For such a simple concept, delivery plays a large role in a company’s performance. Doing well at delivering quickly can Read more…

Warehouses

Warehouses are organized storage locations. They can store both finished goods or raw materials and components. While some warehousing can be unavoidable, in general, these types of storage facilities go against most Lean principles. Raw materials and components should be ordered just-in-time and stored at the point of use. If Read more…

Work Units

One of the basic goals of lean is to create flow. The rationale is that the more that material sits in one place, the more waste it creates. In most cases, this means a single piece of work moving through a connected process. This is where the term “one-piece flow” Read more…

You unintentionally perform faster than usual when being timed

One of the things that takes some getting used to in a Lean organization is the fact that people are constantly watching each other. Leaders are relentlessly told to go to gemba. Teams participate in a never ending parade of kaizen activity. Employees from other work areas visit to do benchmarking and get ideas for best practices. In a nutshell, if you work in the company with a culture of continuous improvement, you will be on display.

You keep running into problems while trying to time for Standard Work

Process documentation is important for two reasons. The obvious one is to create work instructions that record the details of how a process should be completed. The other big reason is to create a standard sequence of operations (i.e. when the process steps should be done) to provide more consistency in the time a process takes. This helps leaders accurately assess the staffing needs of an organization. It also provides an indicator of when a team member is falling behind on a process.

Your team can’t agree on who should be timed when developing Standard Work

One of the realities of creating standardized processes is that they need standard times. This is generally done using the Time Observation Sheet. The challenge, though, is that there are a few different strategies you can use when selecting the person who should do the work when being timed. If the person is slow, most people will be standing around when they do the process. If the observed individual is one of the most proficient, others will struggle to keep up.

Tooling

Tooling is a generic term for any of the variety of equipment associated with production machines, especially ones that do fabrication. Cutting tools, dies, precision clamps, injection molds, jigs, and fixtures all fall into this category. Most companies with more than just a few production machines will have a tooling Read more…