March 30, 2017
The Toyota Production System (TPS) was not hatched on the manufacturing floor nor any university. TPS is a result of the history of Toyota. The TPS was forged on economic, competitive and people’s push on the Toyota Company. We believe the best way to understand the TPS is to discuss it in the context of […]
March 27, 2017
If you are operating today exactly the way that you operated yesterday, how will you ever achieve perfection? Perfection is not achievable because what is perfect today is not perfect tomorrow so it is an ever changing target. However, some of the very best companies are continuously chasing that target. If they are operating closer […]
March 23, 2017
Work is not progressing as fast as you’d like. Time is misspent either in meetings, or making decisions regarding simple things, or you’re fielding questions constantly during the day because you are the one with all the answers. That is the challenge that is usually seen with a Control Freak. If you believe that you […]
March 21, 2017
A business wants to focus their product or service on customers that have asked for their products or services. Currently, the business approaches satisfying their customers in terms of large batches. That means that you produce your product or service in a large quantity and then store it in preparation for delivery to your customer. […]
March 16, 2017
Your manufacturing business uses statistics to measure its performance. There are a wealth of statistical tools out there and all of them have preconditions that let you know how capable the tool will be. One of the most important preconditions is that the inference or population data is normally distributed. The fact of the matter […]
March 13, 2017
When we talk about flow what exactly are we talking about? Whether you are in the service industry, manufacturing industry, or medical industry, flow refers to the movement of either product, service, information or anything in your organization that goes from one place to another. The inhibitor to flow is waste in Lean Six Sigma […]
March 12, 2017
Hard Dollars or Soft Dollars. Which is best? Both of those dollars represent a savings to somebody. Let’s discuss them in a little more detail. Hard Dollars Hard Dollars are dollars that you can actually see in a budget. These Dollars are savings that you can actually quantify either now or into the future. These […]
March 9, 2017
If You Run at 6 Sigma, How Come You Test at 4.5 Sigma? If you believe you have a 6 Sigma process, in other words 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO), do you test at 4.5 Sigma? I’ve always wondered what the value of the test is when you never exceed the test value. The […]
March 6, 2017
Every Value Stream (a look from customer request/order all the way through to delivery) has a constraint. Constraints by definition are the process, which if the Value Stream were accelerated, would start to have Work In Progress pileup in front of it. The constraint is not always obvious and is only seen with a complete […]
March 3, 2017
100% inspection is at best 80% effective. Businesses that use inspection to drive in quality for their customers pay a heavy price for doing this. If you’re running at six Sigma that means that you have 3.4 DPMO (Defects Per Million Opportunities). This is a rate of one defect per 294,000 opportunities. How will you […]
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