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 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 Read more…
An andon light, in its most common use, is a status indicator for a work area. It generally has green, yellow, and red lights in a stack. As the operator experiences abnormal conditions, he or she lights a different color. The colors have meaning. Yellow might be a call for Read more…
Most people go to work to do their job. When a company becomes focused on continuous improvement, that is no longer enough.
The true turning point of a company on its Lean journey is when…
One of the barriers to both creating flow and providing value is that companies are not organized to do either effectively. They tend to have their management system set up in functional silos. To deliver something to the customer it must cross several managerial boundaries. Each manager has his or her own budget and agenda.
Instead, companies should…
p>Taiichi Ohno, the father of modern Lean is credited with saying something to the effect of “without standards there can be no improvement.” While the translation may not be exact, the gist of it is what is important.
The first problem is that…
Flow is a central concept in Lean operations. It is basically the premise that work should never sit. With this as a target, several things happen. The first is that lot sizes are reduced. Work doesn’t flow if it has to wait for a production run to be completed.
Flow also drives…
Most people base the way they think on fight or flight. In the early days of cavemen, people had only those two basic reactions to a problem. How they chose to respond to an event was based primarily on its similarity to something they had seen before. In their situation, it made sense to do this because many situations were a matter of life and death.
In the modern world, though…
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.
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 Read more…
Containment is an interim quality management step. When a problem is identified, the organization must take steps to prevent defects from escaping. Containment is a method of systematically identifying and quarantining all materials that are suspect until they can be confirmed not to contain defective items. Note that this is Read more…
A Corrective Action Report (CAR) is a tool used to support a quality program. It is a written record of the investigation into the root cause of a problem and the actions that are required to permanently eliminate the underlying issue. A documented corrective action program is a requirement of Read more…