Let me ask you this question about the benefit of Lean. Is jogging a mile harder than sprinting a quarter mile? That’s the basic problem with pitching Lean as making a job easier. It’s not always an apples-to-apples comparison. Sure, Lean makes tasks easier. But the entire job might actually get more strenuous. This is most common when a job starts with a lot waste of either walking or waiting in it. The hardest parts of Read more…
There’s a little pastry shop up the road from us. It’s just far enough off our beaten path that we have to make an effort to go there. My wife stopped in a few years back and got lousy service. I had gone around the same time, but I thought the staff did OK. Since then, I haven’t passed the shop alone when I needed my sugar fix. Unfortunately for them, my wife’s opinion dictated our Read more…
The current economy reminds me of a story about two guys walking in the woods. They come upon a grizzly bear up ahead on the trail. The bear sees them, and starts licking his chops as he starts down the path towards them. One of the hikers sits down and immediately starts lacing up his running shoes. The other hiker says, “What are you doing. You can’t outrun that bear.” The response: “I don’t have Read more…
I have spent the majority of my waking hours for the last three weeks or so staring at my computer screen. My bloodshot eyes have gotten to really dislike re-doing any work I have already done once. To prevent the waste of this rework, we at Velaction use a process to go over page designs before making any changes on the website. So, we followed our standard steps, and I made some changes to the appearance of Read more…
Once again, I found myself re-learning Lean lessons. This time it was a valuable one about inventory. Whenever I go to the big warehouse style megastore, they always have great deals. The last ‘great deal’ was on a couple pounds of grape tomatoes. This morning, as I was throwing out the shriveled remains of the last 20 or so little tomato corpses, I wondered how much I really saved per pound, if I amortized the Read more…
What’s the biggest difference between how shop floor (gemba) work and office processes flow? It’s not what you might think. A task is a task, whether you are grinding out burrs, installing an electric motor, or entering data. Sure, the motions are different, but in truth, the mechanics are similar. Your brain decides what to do. It tells your muscles how to do it. It doesn’t matter if your brain tells your finger muscles which keys to Read more…
Waste reduction is a cornerstone of Lean. Waste is anything that does not add value to a process or serve the customer. The first step to eliminating waste is identifying it. Most people do this by observing a process and looking for inefficiency or redundancy. Although you can learn a lot by watching, sometimes you end up identifying more waste by listening. Whether you are on the shop floor or in an office, find a Read more…
Remember Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? On one hot summer day, young Tom Sawyer got stuck doing a hard day’s labor—whitewashing his aunt’s long picket fence. Mr. Twain tells the tale much better than I can, but the basic plot is simple. All morning long, Tom’s friends pass by and give sympathy to the poor lad stuck wielding the brush. In a stroke of brilliance, Tom, instead of accepting their sympathy, refuses Read more…
A while back, I was at clinic for a flu shot. As I was waiting in line, I could hear one of the nurses in the other room loudly describe her manager in unpleasant terms. The main gist of the RN’s complaint seemed to center around productivity. According to the nurse, her boss had asked her how many injections she had given at a recent immunization clinic. She proudly reported her total, at which point Read more…