Many Lean afflictions reduce the effectiveness of your continuous improvement efforts. One such affliction is Selective Hearing Syndrome. In this disease, people filter out information that doesn’t support their views or that involves things they don’t want to do. They also interpret the meaning of this information exclusively based on Read more…
“Go to Gemba” is a frequent refrain in Lean. It has two basic meanings. The first is that leaders should get down to the shop floor regularly to see what is happening. The second is meaning is to keep people from debating provable facts. When a discussion starts about something Read more…
Another of several Lean afflictions, Squirrel Chasing Syndrome is the inability to remain focused on the goal or task at hand when something enticing comes into view. This generally means abandoning the current task and switching to the new task without any real planning. This form of distraction is harmful Read more…
SME is a non-profit organization that is geared towards helping companies with innovation and growth through the promotion of manufacturing technology. It also emphasizes training the workforce and “connecting the manufacturing industry”. Its original target audience was manufacturing engineers, but it has since rebranded itself to appeal to a wider Read more…
The Shingo Institute is part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. Its namesake is Shigeo Shingo, the man responsible for documenting the early improvements made by Toyota and spreading Lean to the western world. While the Shingo Institute provides training, its most notable activity is awarding the Shingo Read more…
This is a tricky entry. There is a lot of corporate politics, personal opinion, and vague memories that go into it. This consulting group, however, is important to the development of Lean in the US, so deserves a place in this list. A bit of background. In the rapid growth Read more…
Bill Smith (1929-1993) is the little-known inventor of Six Sigma while working at Motorola. Reportedly, his early version of the problem-solving steps was “MAIC”, or measure, analyze, improve, control, with “Define” added later to make it the current version, “DMAIC”. As a result of Smith’s efforts, Motorola was the first Read more…
John Shook is a Lean author, and currently (as of 2020) the chairman of the Lean Global Network and a senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute. He co-wrote Learning to See, the book that is most responsible for introducing Western manufacturing to value stream mapping. He also has the Read more…
Shigeo Shingo (January 8, 1909 – November 14, 1990) is one of the early pioneers of the Toyota Production System. He worked with Taiichi Ohno, though there is some question as to how instrumental he was in the development of this new way of thinking. The debate ranges from him Read more…
Walter Andrew Shewhart (March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an engineer, statistician, and physicist. He did a great deal of work in industrial quality with an emphasis on statistical process control. He is perhaps best known for his impact on the PDCA cycle. Deming reportedly adopted it from Read more…
There’s an old story about two lumberjacks who decided to have a contest to see who could chop the most wood. One was a young, energetic man who could chop relentlessly. He was convinced he would win easily against the older lumberjack who was on the back end of his Read more…
A shadow board is typically pegboard, often painted white, with a colored outline for the tool below each hook. Consider a tools storage setup such as this one. While it looks organized, it would be hard to determine which tool was missing if there was a blank space. So, what Read more…