Continuous Improvement at the Front Line of Change

Yokoten

Jeff Hajek — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:41:24 +0000

Yokoten is a Japanese term that loosely translates into "horizontal deployment." Essentially, it is the spreading of information across the organization. A key point to this is that it is not just the result that is shared, but also the process that led to the result.

Value Stream Analysis

Jeff Hajek — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:54:15 +0000

Value stream analysis is one of the steps in the value stream mapping process. The first step is to create a current state value stream map. This is simply a snapshot in time of the current conditions of an organization. Once the map is complete, however, you must decide what to do.

Frontline Employees

Jeff Hajek — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:53:27 +0000

Frontline employees are the people who do the ongoing production work in an organization. While the range and skills of frontline employees vary widely, most of the entry-level jobs within the company fall into this category. That is not to say all jobs are entry-level. There are many senior production workers, especially among skilled fabricators and machine operators.

Shojinka

Jeff Hajek — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:39:26 +0000

Shojinka is a form of flexible manufacturing, where the number of workers is very to match demand requirements. This is obviously superior to a static system that staffs work areas without consideration to fluctuations in production requirements. Being able to reassign people to exactly where they are needed will help keep production areas of falling behind. This form of flexible staffing also releases people to work on improvement projects when demand is low across the board.

Talking Lean (Episode #1, 6-14-2013)

Jeff Hajek — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:29:54 +0000

Welcome to Episode 1 of "Talking Lean" with Jeff Hajek (me) and Tim McMahon (from the "A Lean Journey" blog). This show is intended to be a buffet of Lean bites. Tim and I both have a variety of features that we regularly post on our websites. Unfortunately, great content such as this can get lost in a sea of Lean noise.