The concept of continuous improvement is that there is always an opportunity to get better. Sometimes, though, team members question how much better they can get. The truth is that Lean is not a magic drug that can cure everything about a company instantly. It takes work, and commitment, and Read more…
Developing a winning team is critical to the success of a Lean organization. That’s because a strong continuous improvement culture demands the involvement of people throughout the organization. And people won’t want to take on that responsibility if they do not feel prepared for the challenge. In our April, 2011 Read more…
In January, I posted an article about ways to start building a continuous improvement culture in your organization. Tim McMahon and I revisited the topic in March when we did a live Lean webinar chat on the subject. Tim added some of his perspective, and we talked for nearly an Read more…
Most people see the automotive industry as a great way to show how to apply Lean concepts to your organization, but your own car can also provide valuable insight into the application of Lean tools. In this video, Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey and I discuss how an item Read more…
As a small company, we are challenged to get new products to market fast enough to meet your needs. To combat that, we use the ‘better, not perfect’ philosophy at times. Instead of spending the time and resources to create a highly polished product, we record classes presented as a Read more…
QCD is the acronym for the broad categorization of metrics and KPIs in continuous improvement. The acronym QCD stands for: Quality: In most cases, this view of quality is “conformance to specification”, rather than grade. Cost: Cost, obviously, has a prominent role due to its close tie to profitability. Delivery: Read more…
An unlinked production environment is like an accordion. Some processes move faster than the average and some operate more slowly. As a result, parts move through the system at varying speeds, only to end up in piles of inventory scattered along the value stream. Even with a takt time in Read more…
There’s an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately, many office environments face a similar problem regarding balancing capacity and demand. Because the incoming workload fluctuates, it never matches a static capacity. This effect is compounded when work is assigned to individual employees rather Read more…
I’ve been reading a lot about the problem of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job lately, and I haven’t seen anyone address the real root cause of the problem. What has been mentioned at length is the fact that there are periods of radio silence. In those cases, Read more…
Everybody sees kaizen events as an opportunity to make an improvement. Most people also see them as an opportunity to train teams. But few regard them as a way to identify the future leaders of the company. Employees working in frontline production roles have limited chances to demonstrate their skills. Read more…
Stakeholders are the people that are vested in the outcome of something. They are not necessarily people who actually do the process, but they do have some skin in the game. Stakeholders that are indirectly affected by a process frequently have a negative effect from the change. In many cases, Read more…
In any job, you will encounter difficult aspects of the work. Lean companies are no exception. Fortunately, in a Lean organization, there are established methods for both dealing with the problem tasks, as well as for justifying the need to make the improvement.