Gotta Go Lean Blog

You aren’t sure what to do when a problem halts production.

Production glitches and line stops are a fact of life. The better your team gets, the less frequent and shorter they stoppages are, but they will always occur. Even great teams are constantly working to make processes better. Sometimes, this is done by removing safety nets to see where the system breaks. Regardless of why it is happening, though, when work stops, many people have to quickly decide what to do until the line is Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsOctober 1, 2012 ago

Continuous Improvement Strategies

You don’t like getting checked up on.

Continuous improvement is built around the PDCA, or plan-do-check-act cycle. Unfortunately for many people, they are not used to the “check” step. As a result, they often feel micromanaged and untrusted when the boss comes into the area to see how things are progressing.

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 30, 2012 ago

Lean Terms

Hammers

Enter a heavy manufacturing facility, and you will likely hear the “clank, clank, clank” of metal hammers, or the dull thud of a dead blow hammer. Hammers are used to compensate for a quality problem elsewhere. In most cases, they are used to “adjust” a component, or install something that was designed with too little tolerance to be easily assembled. Hammers greatly increase the risk of injury, even if it is minor. People constantly bonk Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 30, 2012 ago

Lean Terms

Status Quo

The status quo is defined as the current or existing state or condition. In plain English, it is how things are today. There is an old adage that the definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results. Getting better requires that something is done differently. If a process never changes, the output of that process will not change either. On the other hand, one of the basic tenets of Lean Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 30, 2012 ago

Lean Terms

Queueing Theory

Lines are a fact of life. They result from a company trying to keep the costs of providing its services in check in the face of fluctuations in customer demand. With enough resources to handle spikes, companies never make customers wait. Of course, profit would drop significantly because employees would be idle much of the time. On the other hand, if the company staffs for the average demand, they won’t have enough resources to cover Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 30, 2012 ago

Continuous Improvement Strategies

Demand picked way up, but staffing isn’t going to be adjusted.

The total workload for a team is directly related to the demand, and demand tends to change over time. On occasion, the demand rises faster than planned, and suddenly a team feels shorthanded. For a variety of reasons, there can be a delay in getting more people on the staff to handle the additional work.

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 29, 2012 ago

Lean Terms

Important vs. Urgent

People make decisions every day about what tasks to add to their schedule. They basically have two choices. They can do the important stuff, or they can take on the urgent stuff. Urgent things are due immediately, and often have people hounding the taskee to get them done. Important things are often related to “big picture” activities that don’t cause problems on a day to day basis. Because of this, there is generally nobody asking Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 29, 2012 ago

Continuous Improvement Strategies

You see and hear (and maybe even make) lots of complaints.

You spend an incredibly large percentage of your day at work. On top of that, the general tone of the day carries over to your personal life. When the day is full of complaints, whether yours or other people’s, the day takes a lot out of you. Fortunately, there are some ways to battle complaints in the workplace.

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 28, 2012 ago

Continuous Improvement Strategies

You can’t get your manager to understand how much a broken machine is costing the company.

There is a fine line between wanting new equipment and needing new equipment. One of the best examples is computers. Every 15 minutes or so, a breakthrough in computing power happens, and the equipment you are using becomes obsolete. But upgrading with each new release is too expensive. The flip side, though is also true. Sometimes the waste generated by an old system is far, far greater than the cost of getting a new computer. Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 28, 2012 ago

Lean Terms

Standardization

Standardization is the act of establishing a specified condition, process, or practice. It is a very general, blanket term which covers a variety of ways to add consistency to whatever is being standardized. Standardization is one of the most important concepts in continuous improvement because it provides a stable platform upon which to make changes and test the results in a PDCA cycle. Without standardization, changes are irrelevant because the underlying conditions upon which they Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 26, 2012 ago

NoIndex Site Info

Who’s Been Buying Our Products?

If you are considering using our Lean Training System to propel you along you continuous improvement journey, you are not alone. The customers that have already purchased our services or training materials come from a wide range of organizations. A sampling is listed below. ADP Agilent Technologies Amazon.com Arrow Electronics Automatic Pool Covers, Inc. Barretts Minerals Inc. Benchmark Electronics Bendix Bordeaux Management School Boston Scientific Brady Corporation Britco Building Innovation British Columbia Institute of Technology California Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 23, 2012 ago

Continuous Improvement Strategies

You don’t know what to expect with all this Lean stuff.

Many people first learn about Lean when their boss tells them the company will be changing the way it does business. The information they receive tends to focus on what Lean is, and how it works. But often, they can’t quite make out what it will mean to their job, or their job satisfaction. This can be scary for people. Fortunately, there is a reliable resource that they can turn to: their coworkers and peers Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, 13 yearsSeptember 22, 2012 ago