Baka yoke is the Japanese term for “fool proofing” or “idiot proofing”. Needless to say, it is not the most politically correct of terms, and has been replaced in common use by poka yoke, or “mistake proofing”. The principle is the same for both terms. Prevent mistakes rather than correct Read more…
There is a news story circulating around about an airliner that missed its designated stop. The control tower tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane for 78 minutes. The plane ended up flying 150 miles past the airport before the pilots re-established contact and turned the plane around. It seems strange Read more…
A workaround is an unofficial or temporary fix for a problem. In effect, it is an admission that the issue cannot be immediately resolved, and a patchwork fix is put in place. Workarounds are not intended to be permanent fixes but have a tendency to be left in place longer Read more…
SMED means “single minute exchange of die”. It is one of the great enablers of Lean manufacturing for the simple reason that it reduces batch sizes. Simply put, when changeover takes a long time, a machine that makes many parts needs to run big batches all at once to be Read more…
Setup reduction is the act of lowering the time it takes to switch from one product to another. In a traditional manufacturer, the switching time (changeover) is long. As a result, if they do more than an occasional switch, they run out of production time. So, they produce long runs Read more…
A supplier who is a part of the same company as its customer is an internal supplier. They may provide products, services, or other resources. They are the upstream processes and the support groups that provide their coworkers with the tools, materials, and work-in-process to do their jobs. Internal suppliers Read more…
In the last few months, I’ve seen several speed traps set up in schools zones where multiple police officers line up and systematically pull over a steady stream of drivers. Now, I’m not in the car with those drivers, but I would bet that most of them aren’t intentionally trying Read more…
So, it is a Sunday morning, and the outlook for today is bleak. You see, it is the bye week for my favorite football team–the Chicago Bears. I can handle the wait from the end of the season until the first game of the next one, but giving me a Read more…
One of the core principles of Lean is to create flow. But flow is impossible to achieve with long setup times. When it takes an extensive amount of time to switch from one product to another, operators must run large lots to produce enough parts to keep production flowing. With Read more…
A U-shaped cell is exactly what it sounds like—a work area that is organized in the shape of a ‘U’. The U-shaped cell allows an operator to finish her work in virtually the same location that she started, eliminating the waste of walking back from the end of a line Read more…
A value stream map (VSM) is a drawing that depicts the flow of material and information along a value stream. A value stream is the linked series of processes that brings a product from raw materials into the hands of the customer, or that provide a service to a customer. Read more…
The current state value stream map provides a 30,000-foot snapshot of how an organization operates. One of the unique aspects of this tool compared to others is that it shows the flow of both materials and information. This tool is extremely useful for a few reasons: It provides eye-opening insight Read more…