Kaizen is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “change for the good”. Many people equate this to putting together a team of people from several work areas to do a week-long project to reduce waste or improve a process’s flow. These projects may be called a kaizen blitz, a Lean event, a rapid improvement workshop (RIW), a rapid improvement project (RIP), or something else with a similar name. These all fall into the big Read more…
The PDCA cycle is a structured problem-solving approach. It is also known as the Deming cycle, after Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the man credited with popularizing the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. The 4 Steps of the PDCA Cycle include: The plan step of the PDCA cycle entails setting objectives and gathering the information needed to make improvements. In this step, the problem solver implements the plan. They will often do experiments or pilot projects as well. Problem Read more…
There is a news story circulating around about an airliner that missed its designated stop. The control tower tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane for 78 minutes. The plane ended up flying 150 miles past the airport before the pilots re-established contact and turned the plane around. It seems strange to think that a mistake like that is even possible-especially with all of the modern technology that is available to create poka yoke devices. What Read more…
A workaround is an unofficial or temporary fix for a problem. In effect, it is an admission that the issue cannot be immediately resolved, and a patchwork fix is put in place. Workarounds are not intended to be permanent fixes but have a tendency to be left in place longer than anticipated. One problem with a workaround is that it is often quickly pieced together, so is generally not a robust or efficient process. Workarounds Read more…
For many people, the term “Lean”, immediately brings to mind Lean manufacturing and images of the shop floor. While it is true that the origin of Lean certainly stems from these roots, continuous improvement principles have taken hold in the office, and are spreading at breakneck speed. The Lean office is the result of that migration of Lean into the office environment. It was a logical and inevitable that continuous improvement would move from the Read more…
Taiichi Ohno divided waste up into seven forms. Since then, there have been several other versions of the categories of waste (CLOSED MITT, for example). As a refresher…. The Categories of Waste Defects Overprocessing Transportation Motion Waiting Inventory Overproduction Why the Categories of Waste Don’t Matter Breaking waste into categories does have many benefits. First of all, they provide a way of organizing your mind when you evaluate a process to identify its wasteful activities. Read more…
The waste recording form is a simple tool for documenting waste during a process walk. The observer focuses on identifying the wasteful activities a person is performing and records them on the form. The form will usually contain a place to categorize the waste. Waste reduction is a large part of kaizen. The obvious first step in reducing waste is to identify it. That is the benefit of using a waste recording form. It provides Read more…
SMED means “single minute exchange of die”. It is one of the great enablers of Lean manufacturing for the simple reason that it reduces batch sizes. Simply put, when changeover takes a long time, a machine that makes many parts needs to run big batches all at once to be able to provide enough product to the downstream processes. This drives up inventory and reduces flexibility of the production system. SMED uses setup reduction to Read more…
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) is the founder of Ford Motor Company and the man most widely known as the inventor of the moving assembly line. While the first is true, the second common belief is a bit inaccurate. Ford actually popularized the moving assembly line; he didn’t invent it. There were numerous other examples of moving assembly lines prior to Henry Ford’s 1908 line producing the Model T. In fact, Read more…
Setup reduction is the act of lowering the time it takes to switch from one product to another. In a traditional manufacturer, the switching time (changeover) is long. As a result, if they do more than an occasional switch, they run out of production time. So, they produce long runs of parts, adding to inventory and all the problems that brings: more space for storage, more quality problems, more money tied up in inventory, more Read more…
