December 20, 2017
Are you a Manufacturer or Assembler? There are multiple types of manufacturers. Lots of times individuals consider themselves manufacturers when it is possible that they are really assemblers. Every manufacturer assembles goods. Toyota consider themselves to be in assembler. So what is the difference between a company that considers themselves a manufacturing company and a […]
December 8, 2017
Lean Production Failure We were working with a company that was very interested in implementing Lean Production. They had partially started on their way by standardizing processes and feeding some employees real-time information. They had about five major products and then some supporting, less complicated products. What they didn’t understand is that Lean Production works […]
November 12, 2017
Flexible Manufacturing Definition: The ability to manufacture either at least two products or two models of one product on the same assembly line (preferably at the same time). In most situations it makes sense for a Mass Production environment to embrace Flexible Manufacturing. Mass Production is a department based manufacturing system. It focuses on each […]
October 4, 2017
Lean Hospitals are the hospitals of the future. Hospitals exist in a dynamic environment. Insurance companies pay them, patients rate them, and doctors select them. Hospitals support patients with complex medical procedures and recovery plans but hospitals also still damage patients. Liability issues drive up costs. There are extensive cost controls in place and increased […]
September 29, 2017
The world is full of processes. If you are ever going to do something more than once, make it into a process. There are processes such as Emergency Room admittance, surgery set up and Claims process. The process standardizes the way activities are performed. When the process was first designed the individual or group that […]
August 20, 2017
You are running a manufacturing business and you have found yourself up to your neck in inventory. Inventory costs you money. It depreciates, takes up space, and you must pay to move it. Inventory looks like an asset on your books however, you know that it is anything but an asset. You are running Mass […]
July 18, 2017
Toyota averages one accepted change per employee per quarter. Fujio Cho, a former CEO of the Toyota Motor Company set out to write a book encapsulating the Toyota Production System which Toyota internally calls the Toyota Way. After working on this effort for 10 years he decided that he could not write a static book […]
May 16, 2017
DMAIC (Define Measure Analyze Improve Control) Define -The start of the planning and selection process. Overarching Principles • Start Project Charter – perform preliminary work to the best of your capability • Flesh out communications plan and structure Operational Activities • Select team members • Select expertise not on team • Determine schedule (first pass) […]
May 10, 2017
Lean Six Sigma works for governments. Ft. Wayne Indiana (Picture 1) implemented Lean Six Sigma a while back. They focused first on supporting their citizens. One example of that was building a web based building permit submittal process. This has a couple of advantages. The first is that the building contractors and homeowners can submit […]
May 8, 2017
Taiichi Ohno came away from the Ford plant with some thoughts. The first was that there was lots of waste littered around the plant. The next thought that followed was that it actually cost less when you make small batches of stampings rather than large production runs. The Toyota Production System advanced on this seminal […]
April 27, 2017
You are a CEO and have never walked your Value Streams. Walk before talk. A company exists to take either material or information and add value to it. The system in your company that creates value is called a Value Stream. It starts with request and ends with product or service. Between those two states […]
April 20, 2017
Airplanes – Six Sigma Airplanes run at Six Sigma. Do that mean they don’t have failures? No. But think about what you care about. The plane crashing is a failure for me. Components on planes fail all the time but who cares if the plane still flies and lands. Six Sigma is a matter of […]
April 17, 2017
Mass Production too many Defects Prior to and up to 1950, the total production volume of the Toyota Motor Company was 2685 automobiles. The most efficient automobile factory in the world, operated by Ford, produced 7000 in a single day. This led Eiji Toyoda, who studied every square inch of that Ford plant, to conclude […]
April 13, 2017
The Western Electric Company and Lloyd Nelson created elegant and simple rules. These rules test whether a process is “out of control”. These helped manufacturers for years to determine the degradation of their processes. Statistical Process Control (SPC) uses these run charts to derive comfort that their process is stable. Really, violation of these rules […]
April 11, 2017
Manufacturers run the business using statistics because they give the best metrics for manufacturing performance. We have listed a summary table of statistical tests here that may be useful for selection of statistical test. Some are Non-Parametric and others are Parametric. Some will measure means and others variation. These are the suite that a Lean […]
April 10, 2017
General Motors has come into play because they out innovated Ford. GM saw a weakness in Ford and that they did not produce cars in different colors. So GM took advantage of this weakness and started to produce cars in multiple colors thereby displacing Ford in many markets. Innovation helps businesses move past competitors. This […]
April 5, 2017
Competition is stiff and always napping at your heels. Virtually every business has aggressive competitors. Coupled with that is the fact that the market that you are selling to is ever-changing. If you can change as fast as your market, then your business must be managed optimally. Of course, no business could be managed optimally […]
April 3, 2017
Mass Production is the primary accreditation that people give to Ford. However, Ford’s real contribution was not mass production, but what he enlightened saw as the enabler to mass production. During this time period cars were manufactured using Craft Manufacturing. Every part added to a car was custom modified to fit. When Ford first started […]
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 […]
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