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Gotta Go Lean Blog

Theory of Constraints

The “Theory of Constraints” is the management philosophy of Eliyahu M. Goldratt. He introduced it in his 1984 book, The Goal. The overall premise is that a system can only produce as fast as the slowest step. The throughput of the system, therefore, can be improved with a focused effort to improve that step, the constraint. Bottlenecks In the theory of constraints, the primary improvement effort is always to identify and streamline the bottleneck. Any Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Pilot Project

Major changes are often hard to implement all at once. It may be because the technology or idea is not fully proven, or it may be a lack of resources in getting the bugs worked out. There may also be substantial risk if there is a mistake in the planning that shuts down a large operation. To combat the potential for problems, a pilot can be used. It is a small scale, working implementation of Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Barriers to Flow

Most continuous improvement efforts, either directly or indirectly, are centered on improving flow. Flow is the condition where work moves from one process to the next without stopping. Improving flow means taking out all the efficiencies that keep that continuous movement smooth and direct. When flow doesn’t exist, it is not because it is unwanted. Even the most batch-oriented manufacturer would prefer flow, but they see many reasons why flow is not practical. These reasons, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Queue Time

Queue time is a very specific form of waiting, one of the traditional seven wastes. It occurs when a person or item is in line behind something else and is waiting for the same resource. Queue time occurs in two basic flavors. There is the time spent by the customer waiting to get into your value stream (i.e. the customer lined up at a fast food counter or on hold.) The other form of queuing Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Gap Analysis

Gap analysis is the art of identifying where performance or capability falls short of needs, and of coming up with an effective way of addressing that gap. That gap is also occasionally referred to as the “delta”. That delta comes in one of two forms. The first is that there is a gap in capability. For example, you want to be able to paint your products, but have no paint shop in your organization. The Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

SWAG

SWAG is an acronym, likely originating in the US Army, for “scientific wild-ass guess”. It is used to describe a hypothesis or decision that is based on a small amount of factual evidence, but nowhere near enough to have certainty. Any organization with a fast pace of change, at some point, relies on SWAGs in their decision making process. In a perfect world, problem solvers have sufficient time to spend in the planning stage, which Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

A Quarter Million Viewers Can’t Be Wrong

Sometime in the last few days, we passed the quarter million video views mark on YouTube. Far from the numbers the typical kitty playing with yarn gets, but for a small business, we think it is pretty respectable. And much appreciated. The funny thing is that nothing really changed between view number 249,999 and 250,000. But interestingly, I got an emotional lift from passing that arbitrary threshold. In fact, the lift started when I noticed Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

You don’t think a Lean tool will work in your area.

One of the jobs of a leader in a Lean environment is to push teams to embrace a continuous improvement culture. The often entails asking the team to try to implement one of the Lean tools in a work area. On occasion, the tool they the boss recommends is not a perfect fit. Before rejecting the tool, though, check to see if there is a way to use a modified version of it.

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Stability

The term stability is the tendency of something to keep its current state. The opposite of stability is Lean operations is variation, or the state of things fluctuating wildly, or drifting away from normal. Stable processes tend to not only produce high quality outputs, but also do it in a predictable time with a minimal amount of waste. In continuous improvement, stability is most often used to describe a process. If a process is stable, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

One-Touch Installation

Many people are familiar with the concept of one-touch exchange of dies, an offshoot of SMED. The basically means that there should be a simple, fluid motion to replace dies and fixtures in order to minimize setup time. The concept is present in the real world as well. Consider the belt strap on a backpack. Many years ago, one would have to feed the running end through a buckle, align the pin in the hole, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago