Lean Manufacturing

Is it Kaizen or Just Good Management?

One of the risks, or should we say unintended consequences of a successful lean implementation is that people become unhappy when “there are no more problems to solve”. This seemed like an odd statement when it was first heard spoken at a recent lean leadership session, so we dug deeper. more>>

Overheard in Amsterdam: I Just Want the #$%@ to Clean Things Up

It was midnight body time and 8AM in Amsterdam. Sitting in the KLM lounge waiting for a connection, the two men in the chairs next to me speak with American accents: "So I want to go over what they are doing. Hour by hour charts? Standard work? Process capability? 5S?" more>>

Endless Meetings Speed Up the Pace of Change on the Gemba

An article in the May 1, 2008 issue of Nikkei Business titled Endless Meetings Speed Up the Pace of Change on the Gemba (ダラダラ会議が現場のスピードアップを生む) interviewed the chairman and profiled a Japanese company called Ulvac that makes semiconductor equipment, display manufacturing equipment and other high tech equipment. This article is part more>>

You Can't Steal What is Shared Freely

Whoever got people started using the phrase "steal shamelessly" in regards to lean ideas and practices should be ashamed. I am quietly offended when people say this to me because it shows a certain lack of respect for the act of teaching. I am sure that most people do not more>>

Built in Quality Means Having Your Cake But Not Eating It

There was an interesting bit of news from the BBC about a Honda factory in Swindon, England. Apparently the management there have placed restrictions on the sorts of cakes, fruit and chocolates the workers can eat in their break rooms. There is a tone of muted outrage, or at least more>>

Guest Post: Takt Time Competition

By: Ron Pereira, LSS Academy Jon has blogged about takt time many times before. Most recently he offered a free Excel based takt time calculator. The tricky part about calculating takt time is normally associated with what to use for the daily demand number. Do you look at the past more>>

A Lean Enterprise Transformation is Like a Marathon

A lean enterprise transformation is like a marathon. Success depends on daily conditioning. It's unlike a marathon in that it's not a race with a goal at the end of 26 miles. Perhaps it's more accurate to say being a lean organization is like being a marathon runner. Organizational fitness more>>

How Many Times Do You Pull the Andon Cord Each Day?

A reader commented recently on the article about the ten reasons one piece flow will not work saying "The answer to one and two is "watch production stop!?" If this is your plan to make/save money and work as a team, I want no part of it." This is a more>>

Fixed Position Stop System

Brandon posted a question in the comment section of an article about hourly production control boards, asking: "I have an automotive assembly line and it contains six different stations. The vehicles are on a automated line that has the speed controlled according to the fixed takt time. If an andon more>>

The Lean Blog is Experiencing Technical Difficulties

If you've checked with the Lean Blog today and have been disappointed by the "Server Not Found Error 404" message you are not alone. Our friend Mark Graban assures us that he has done nothing to offend the government of Pakistan, and that Google / Blogger is working on their more>>

Three Essential Supervisor Skills for Standard Work

Standard work (called standardized work at Toyota) is hard but it's so important. As one of the cornerstones of the lean system, the difference between having standard work and not having it is truly a step difference in an organization's ability to perform and continually transform itself. Why is standard more>>

Is Lean a Superstition?

The Training Within Industry blog took up the debate on "Is lean a religion?" a few weeks ago. The article points out that when done right, lean is more of a philosophy that guides how you do thing and how you lead people. It's true that lean can turn people more>>

What Can We Learn from Boeing's Lean Supply Chain Stumbles?

Not much more than a decade ago, Boeing went through a hiring binge to ramp up production, fell flat on deliveries and shed many jobs as a result. Gemba's office is quite near Boeing's Everett, Washington factory and the full-then-empty highways around Puget Sound were the best indicator of this more>>

TPS-Lean Six Sigma

It's no often that a TPS lean six sigma product or service makes the top 5 list of spam comments on the Gemba Panta Rei blog, but I suppose it was inevitable. This week variations on the comment from TPS-Lean Six Sigma (below) edged out internet gambling, erectile dysfunction remedies more>>

Tap Your Breaks Early and Often to Keep Work Flowing

Here's another counterintuitive truth to Lean: the more often you stop, the more smoothly things will move along. The caveat is that these stops should be small stops, as early and as far away from the actual problem point as possible. This makes sense when you think about the fact more>>

Five Questions to Ask When You Hear "We're too busy for Lean"

How many times have you heard "We're too busy for Lean" from managers and professionals in your organization? How do you respond? How do you know whether they are in fact too busy? When it is true, what do you do to get them involved? Here are five questions to more>>

Jim Womack Interview in IndustryWeek - Nation Full fo Kaizen Consultants

There is a very long and insightful interview with Jim Womack available at the IndustryWeek online magazine titled Thought Leaders -- Lean On Me (Full Transcript). At over 7,000 words the discussion ranges from a history Womack and Jones' discovery of what Lean was to their comparison of Japanese automotive more>>

Alignment of People, Process and Purpose

A few years ago during a visit to the gemba of high volume manufacturing client, I found a good case study in a disjointed Lean implementation. There was a lack of alignment between how management was leading the Lean effort (providing purpose), how the workforce was being engaged (developing people) more>>

Highlights from Lean Manufacturing Journey to the West

On this trip to China I found a lot of openness to learning about new things, and Lean manufacturing in particular. People in China are certainly proud of their 4,000 years of history, but they are eager to learn and progress. We could all learn from this attitude. Eli Goldratt's more>>

Guidelines for Continuous Moving Lines

This article is in response to a question posted by a reader about guidelines for continuous moving lines as part of a Lean manufacturing implementation. This is not a comprehensive list of all things to consider when designing and managing moving lines, but it is a good start. 1 - more>>

Questions About Lean Manufacturing in China

I will be in China this week seeing some factories and talking to people about Lean manufacturing. Adapting and applying time-tested methods and approaches to new environments and new challenges is always a treat. I go with many questions. I haven't kept count but this trip may take me into more>>

Prioritizing the Elimination of the 7 Types of Waste

Tim Wood helps us remember the 7 types of waste, but he does not teach us about prioritizing the elimination of the 7 types of waste. "TIM WOOD" stands for Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Over-processing, Defects but this is by no means the priority in which to attack the more>>

Gary Convis on the Role of Management in Lean Manufacturing

Gary Convis is the Chairman of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky and also serves in Officer roles for Toyota's North American holding companies. Gary Convis helped start up NUMMI, and he was the first American President of a vehicle plant at TMMK. He is someone who we should listen to when more>>

We Live in a Pull Universe

Lean manufacturing works, and this has been proven through decades of practice. Yet decades are admittedly not much when measured against geologic time. Some aspects of TPS such building in quality, getting ideas from people who actually do the work, and creating systems to make problems visible border on the more>>

This Too is a Kanban

The orthodox description of a kanban is a rectangular card in a plastic sleeve used to reorder materials from a supplier or an upstream process, or a triangular metal plate used to signal production for a process that requires changeovers for lot production. However, orthopraxy (correct practice) is more important more>>

Push, Pull, Paper Clips & Problem Solving

The Toyota Production System, or what we call sometimes call Lean management, is simply the practice of planning, trying out your plan, reflecting (hansei) on what worked and what did not work and making adjustments through problem solving. Everyday skills in practical problem solving are required for Lean management to more>>

Keep Your Kanban Cards Close to Your Genbutsu

The primary function of a kanban card is to provide information about production instructions. Kanban cards contain information about where to produce and transport a particular product, when and in what quantity. For information to be useful in making good decisions and in spotting abnormalities, it must be visible. Keep more>>

The Push vs. Pull Diversion Diversion

I'm still scratching my head over an IndustryWeek article titled The Great Push vs. Pull Diversion by By Edward S. Pound and Mark L. Spearman of Factory Physics, consultants and writers of one of my favorite Lean books. They state: Executives and managers in manufacturing have been subject to a more>>

Hope for Chrysler

My hope for Chrysler is that Jim Press can act as a consensus builder and not a heroic, problem solving executive. What Chrysler doesn't need is a wave of Toyota Production System implementation in their factories or a dose of Toyota way in their marketing and sales groups. What Chrysler more>>

Lean Sigma Supply Chain

Lean Sigma Supply Chain is a blog full of thoughtful, pithy posts as well as the occasional deep dive into lean logistics or lean distribution know-how. Today's post about 50 things to do to free up warehouse space is a grab bag of useful ideas. Some of these things address more>>

Is Your Lean Deployment "Made to Stick?"

Mark Rosenthal is The Lean Thinker who connects the ideas from the book Made to Stick to visual controls used on the shop floor in a Lean factory. Mark argues convincingly for having “Sticky” Visual Controls in an article posted yesterday. In summary something is "made to stick" when the more>>

Is the Theory of Constraints (TOC) a Theory?

The tag line Theory of Constraints Exposed in IndustryWeek article from March of this year got me thinking about TOC. Not a bad article by the way, although I'm still waiting for the Lean-TOC software system sales pitch shoe to drop. It got me thinking, is Theory of Constraints really more>>

Road Trips, Bad Directions & Going to Gemba

Thanks for telling us your lean failure stories, Andrea, Allison and Brad. You are all winners. E-mail or call us us with your mailing address and we'll send you a prize. Speaking of things that can ruin a road trip as well as a Lean transformation, here is another: bad more>>

Chrysler's (Lean?) Six Sigma Future

The Chrysler Corporation has a new CEO, Bob Nardelli. Nardelli Picked to Run Chrysler in Industry Shift, the August 6th, Wall Street Journal reports. Mr. Nardelli was most recently in the news for bringing a controversial combativeness and military style of management and aspects of GE Way, including Six Sigma, more>>

New & Improved Free Skill Matrix Template (v. 7.31.07)

New and improved free skill matrix template: these are beautiful words to the ears of a Lean thinker. Thanks to the Excel skills of our Lean office guru Marcie MacRae, we have "the kaizen of the month for July 2007" at Gemba. The color-filling of the four-quadrant skill grid has more>>

Why Is Your Lean Effort Failing?

The Lean Blog is always a good place for insights and discussion on why Lean efforts struggle or fail. Previous discussions have delved into Lean efforts that are in fact LAME. Mark Graban wrote about the survey format of the Lean Institute being tilted toward blame, and not toward finding more>>

A Closed Mitt and an Open Mind

Sorting through old documents as part of my regular 5S at the office I came across another consulting firm's Lean training materials, collected about a decade ago. These explained Lean manufacturing and the idea of eliminating waste using the acronym CLOSED MITT. I am told this comes from Boeing, or more>>

Free Skill Matrix Template

Here is a free skill matrix template in Microsoft Excel format. We receive many requests on this blog and to Gemba Research about the skill matrix template. The skill matrix is a very broadly useful visual management tool for people development. At Gemba we are using this new format to more>>

10 Common Misconceptions About Lean Manufacturing

1. Lean production = volume production. In Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management he suggested that the Toyota system was ideally suited for low volume production, and not as well suited for the higher volume production that Toyota was shifting towards. In chapter 20 after describing the successful efforts at Toyota do more>>

This Week in Kaizen (Wk #25, 2007)

This was a particularly interesting week in kaizen-related news, so here's a roundup: One Thousand Kaizen Events and Counting... Ariens Company of Wisconsin celebrated their one thousandth kaizen event this week. That's 140 man-years of kaizen events since 2001. Great, but how many other ways can people at Ariens do more>>

Three Mini Reviews of Lean Books

And we're back. It's amazing what a lung full of chlorine vapors can do for reading time. Here's a travel tip, before we get started: When staying at a hotel, ask for a room other than the one directly above the pool, such that ceiling of pool = floor of more>>

Lean in Japan, Or Not

The YouTube video titled Lean in Japan is a bit bizarre. It's probably strange enough to most people as a window into modern Japan, but overlaid with Lean lingo it's just weird. It's not clear if this video is tongue-in-cheek or serious but off the mark. The LEI version of more>>

Lean Manufacturing by the Numbers

Lean manufacturing by the numbers: Zero inventory Zero defects Zero accidents 1 piece flow 1 point lesson 2 bin system 2 point control (AB control, full work control) 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) 3 don’ts of assembly 3 don’ts of quality 3 elements of standard work (takt, work sequence, SWIP) 3 more>>

5S Challenge: Which S Is Most Difficult and Why?

"Which of the 5S is most difficult?" I received this question during a class I was teaching recently. I've never been asked this before. People often say "self-discipline is the most difficult" or "sustaining is the most difficult" but this answer never really satisfied me, so after a pause I more>>

Lean Sourcing: The Top Three

We’re writing today as part of a score of bloggers on the topic of The Top Three issues in sourcing. Here’s is our Top Three: 3. Slow is the New Fast When faced with the hard way and the easy way, always take the hard way. This is particularly true more>>

Theme Blogging Week: Lean Sourcing

The Sourcing Innovation blog has organized a group of fellow bloggers in a series of posts on the topic of sourcing over the next week. Each of our 20 or so blogs will raise their Top Three issues in sourcing. What can a kaizen blog offer on the topic of more>>

Get Your Lean Online at Superfactory.com

Our friends at www.Superfactory.com, the home of a great blog, articles on Lean manufacturing from various viewpoints and Lean presentations you can download, now offers Lean training courses online. The self-paced online Lean manufacturing training courses include: Lean Manufacturing 3P Process 5S and Visual Controls Jidoka Kaizen Value Streams Pull, more>>

Is Zero Defects Possible?

Sonu asks: "Is zero defects possible? If so, what are the steps. We are dealing with around 300 parameters each having minimum 25 to 30 parameters to be met. We find it difficult to maintain zero defect for all parameters. Any thoughts???" The first thing I would do is go more>>

Why So Much Confusion About Kanban?

I had a very interesting conversation today with a friend who is a manager spearheading a Lean effort at a local facotry. His latest focus is on connecting the metal forming operations with the assembly operations using kanban. He observed that although there is a great need for kanban, there more>>

Twelve Reasons to Tell Customers About Your Lean Manufacturing Efforts

Here is a follow up to reason #3 from of the post Here are 4.5 Signs that Your Lean May be L.A.M.E. from earlier this week. I could think of 12 reasons to tell customers about your Lean manufacturing efforts. 1. Customer behavior is the problem you need to solve more>>

Here are 4.5 Signs that Your Lean May be L.A.M.E.

Mark Graban at the Lean Blog coined L.A.M.E. as "Lean As Misguidedly Executed" and Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog builds on this idea in pointing out how Lean is often added on in press releases, though it may be out of context. Here are 4.5 signs that your more>>

Safety Glasses Are a Sign of Unsafe Processes

I left the training room too eager to go to gemba today and forgot to put on my safety glasses. Within two minutes one of the safety coordinators on the shop floor stopped me and sent me back to get them. Kudos to the management of this company for instilling more>>

Reading Lean for Dummies

I just finished reading Lean for Dummies. It covers a lot of ground in 362 pages. It's full of diagrams, lists and other useful visuals. It is light and accessible reading. Parts IV "The Lean Enterprise" and Part V "The Part of Tens" are particularly valuable as reference and for more>>

Lean for People of Average Intelligence

When do you know a management concept has hit the mainstream? Like a bug to a windshield, "Lean" as a management approach has now hit bookshelves in the form of Lean for Dummies. It set me off on a minor rant in the office when I learned about this today. more>>

The 5 Why Questions, Like All Roads, Lead to Rome

Today Patrick Shumaker from Gemba forwarded a great example of asking "Why?" persistently until the root cause is found. Why are U.S. standard railroad gages 4 feet 8.5 inches? Rome. You can find the full story on this bulletin board. The "ask why 5 times" approach is also great way more>>

Lean Culture in a Temporary Workforce

Can you have Lean manufacturing without Lean enterprise? Can you have Lean enterprise without a Lean culture? Can you have Lean culture without a motivated shop floor? All of the trappings of operational excellence such as one piece flow cells, kanban systems, TPM programs, and corporate Lean Six Sigma officers more>>

Lean Six Sigma is Not Lean

Lean Six Sigma is not Lean. It is Six Sigma, but one that is more "Lean" than just regular "Six Sigma." In the English language the adjective (Lean) modifies the noun or subject word (Six Sigma). So Lean Six Sigma is technically not Lean at all, but a form of more>>

Getting the CEO on a Kaizen Team is Like Pulling Teeth

As I was flipping through my copy of the February 2007 issue of Dental Economics today, an interview with two Danaher executives caught my eye. Danaher is known as a leading American company who has quietly and profitably grown through smart acquisitions and the application of kaizen and the Toyota more>>

Rarely Has Ranting Been This Good

Blogger BDG123 at Rantings on Markets, Economics and Business Strategy is an electrical engineer and mathematician by training, one-time corporate consultant and corporate sales and marketing executive in the information technology and business consulting, and securities trader, according to his profile. Last week he asked some questions on the industrial more>>

Building a Lean Video Library

Our clients often ask us to help them with building a Lean video library. They want us to recommend 5 or 10 videos on Lean manufacturing that will help their people learn first the general concepts, then the more in-depth tools and systems. The Four Hour House video is a more>>

How to Calculate Standard Work in Process (SWIP) Quantity

Ron Pereira of the Lean Six Sigma Academy blog started the discussion on Standard Work earlier this week, and I would like to pick up where he left off. Standard Work is one of the more misunderstood concepts in Lean manufacturing. It is neither standardization nor work standards. You can more>>

Free Scholarship at the Lean Six Sigma Academy

My friend Ron Pereira started a blog two weeks ago called Lean Six Sigma Academy. The articles so far have been an interesting mix of topics such as Process Mapping - Lean or Six Sigma Tool?, CAVE People, Lean or Six Sigma?, Six Sigma and JIT, The Heated Law of more>>

Lean Manufacturing: A Five-Year Fix?

On the way to the gemba this morning I heard the NPR report on American suit manufacturer Joseph Abboud on the rental car radio. Here is the transcript on the NPR website, titled Suit Maker Goes 'Lean' to Keep Jobs in U.S. The report gave me three thoughts. First, it more>>

Toyota Owes Grandpa Ford

Earlier this month the Lean Insider attempted to answer the question Which Lean Book is Right for My Boss? These folks ought to have the answer, since Productivity Press has published the lion's share of important books on what we call Lean manufacturing today. I have my favorite books on more>>

Why Not Chase the Rabbit?

This is a question I have most often heard from European engineers, or from people in other countries who are working with extremely high volume light assembly operations, usually following some teaching about just in time production or Standard Work: "What do you think about the rabbit chase system?" I more>>

Does Lean Manufacturing = The Toyota Production System?

There is a very interesting discussion over at the Lean blog today in the post To Merge or Not To Merge...Lean & TPS. There were nine reader comments as of tonight, with many good viewpoints on the question of whether the articles on "lean manufacturing" and "Toyota Production System" should more>>

Giving A Shout Out to a Few Gemba Bloggers

I would like to recognize a few fellow bloggers who consistently share genuine events and lessons from Lean manufacturing experiences on their gemba. Mike Wroblewski has promised to return to more active blogging with a post last week. Looking forward to more soon, Mike. Joe Ely's blog Learning About Lean more>>

Top 5 Lean Manufacturing Books for Beginners

From time to time we get e-mails asking for recommendations on books or articles to read for people who are just starting out learning about Lean manufacturing and how the Toyota Production System applies to their business. The reading list section of our website sorely needs to be updated, as more>>

Selecting a Management and Improvement System

Lean manufacturing is a system for managing and improving production operations. More broadly, Lean manufacturing principles can be applied to manage and improve any type of operation from healthcare to service and distribution, as we are increasingly seeing. But how does a decision maker select the appropriate management and improvement more>>

Holiday Shopping is Wasteful

It's time for my second annual Boxing Day railing against the waste caused by holiday spending at the year end. This year we find a December 23, 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled How Christmas Brings Out the Grinch in Economists lending support to my theory that we would all more>>

Ford CEO Mullaly's First Impressions

In the December 22, 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled Mulally's 'First Impressions' published the letter from the former Lean leader of Boeing and now CEO of the Ford Motor to the employees of the company. He starts out by acknowledging that there will be tough decisions ahead, and that more>>

The Starfish, the Spider and the Span of Five

I just finished reading The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman nd Rod A. Beckstrom. It is a quick read with some interesting ideas. I have a number of issues with the book, and by examining these issues we can learn something about more>>

Making a Business Out of Organizing (Making You Feel on Top of Things)

I came across Productivity Cafe, the blog of Susan Sabo of Organizers, Inc. today. She is an author, speaker and consultant who "helps people feel on top of things by training, coaching, and persuading them to be more organized and productive" according to her bio on the blog. There are more>>

When the Customer Defines Value, But They Define It Poorly What Do You Do?

If a customer says "Here's how I want to do Lean." and the consultant says "That's not the right way." and the customer says "Who's the customer here?" and the consultant says "You are." and the customer says "Then I say what I'm willing to pay for." and the consultant more>>

One-Hour Low Tech Lean Introduction

Today was a lesson for me in just-in-time delivery of Lean training (or Lean Lean training) and also in the value of being prepared. We arrived half a day late to a distribution center where we were asked to give Lean overview training to the warehouse managers. We had prepared more>>

How to Stay Out of Trouble with Mr. Convis

Gary Convis is the senior vice president of manufacturing in North America for Toyota Motor Corporation. In a November 20, 2006 article in the Lexington Herald-Leader titled New Tundra Plant Just Shows that ... Toyota Keeps on Trucking Mr. Convis shared how he communicated to employees what work life at more>>

The Water Spider: What's in a Name?

One of the things that keeps Lean manufacturing from being boring to the amateur linguist is the many odd-sounding words that make up the Lean lexicon. Kamishibai. Heijunka. Pareto. Yamazumi. Takt. Andon. Jidoka. Kaizen. Pokayoke. Gemba. And don't even get me started on the acronyms. Then there is this thing more>>

Top 5 Things I Learned in China Last Week

Here are the top five things learned after a productive week in China: 1. You can't overstate the value of respecting another's culture I gave my rudimentary Chinese a workout this time and the results were interesting. Doors opened more smoothly. Services were rendered more quickly. Smiles appeared on the more>>

Seeing the Lean in Milton Friedman's Ideas

Nobel prize winner and Chicago school free market economist and author Milton Friedman has just passed away. The impact of his ideas are huge. It ranks with the impact of the ideas of Henry Ford and Taiichi Ohno. Like Ohno and Ford, Friedman was uncompromising in his ideas. To follow more>>

Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement

Scientist, philosopher and author David Bohm presents challenging ideas on the nature of reality. They are challenging not in that they are difficult (if you are patient with the Calculus) but in that they challenge how we perceive, think and believe. David Bohm makes a case in the book Wholeness more>>

Continuous Improvement Video from Genie Industries

Here is a quick follow up to yesterday's post on 3P. Genie Industries is a local company that makes lifts. They have been doing kaizen for several years with great results. I have toured them and spoken to their continuous improvement leaders as well as workers. They deserve kudos. On more>>

How to Use 3P to Work Out Process Design Alternatives

Apoorva from India asks, "Generally how many alternatives are worked out in 3P?" Production Preparation Process, or 3P as it is known, is the name used to describe the American consulting market's understanding of the Shingijutsu consulting company's understanding of the Toyota Motor Corporation's approach to process development and production more>>

Kaizen Suggestions at Nokia Factory in India Improve Quality

There is an article in the Hindu Business Line on October 23, 2006 titled Smart Ideas at Work. The 3,500 workers at the Nokia factory in Chennai, India gave 1,800 kaizen ideas as part of their suggestion system. Many kaizen ideas seem to have a quality theme to them. There more>>

Educating People is Key to Operational Excellence

TPS is a system of training. These are the words from an article by Toyota on the TPS. The source escapes me at the moment, if anyone knows of it please add a comment. It's my personal belief that the thing that sets Toyota apart from other excellent manufacturers is more>>

Not Trying to Coin A New Buzzword, But...

I'm thinking of phrases to replace the one we are avoiding this month... Contiunously Improving Operation, Rational Manufacturing, Intelligent Operations, Smart Production, Holistic Production, Adaptive Manufacturing, Non-local Optimization, Nimble Manufacturing, Organic Manufacturing, Demand Supply Execution, Flow Production, Customer Vectored Operation, Sane Management, Clear Stream System, Visualized Production, Operational Synchronization, Flexible more>>

The Little Chip Fab that Could

To a person who is not "up" with the latest high tech terminology, a phrase like How AMD Bakes its 65 Nano Barcelona Cakes seems almost like nonsense. Giving near-nonsense a chance can pay off at times, and this article in technology journal The Inquirer contained a neat case study more>>

Lesson in Visual Management from GOL

Last week I had a chance to fly GOL, the Brazilian low cost airlines billing itself as the "intelligent airlines" and an airline having one of the most modern fleets. They are in fact a smart airlines and it was a pleasant flight. Once the Brazilian landscape fell away below, more>>

It's Not Really "Go See", It's "Go Observe"

The Toyota Production System principle of genchi gembutsu is often translated in English as "go see". This rolls off the tongue a lot easier than genchi gembutsu, but it doesn't quite capture the essence. The word "genchi" means "actual place" just as "gemba" does, though "genchi" is not used to more>>

Lean by Any Means Necessary

We toured a tier 1 automotive supplier recently with a group of our customers on our Japan Kaikaku Experience. Our customers learned many things but there was one main lesson. First, the General Manager who took us on the in-depth gemba walk advised us “as a manager, don’t be afraid more>>

What is Flexibility for Lean Manufacturing?

What is flexibility for Lean manufacturing? There's the beginnings of a good discussion on flexibility and what it means for Lean manufacturing on the Lean blog, posted Thursday September 7th. Blogger Luke Van Dongen notes that flexibility is sometimes used interchangeably with Lean. Flexibility refers mostly to a traditional philosophy more>>

That's Not Cost Reduction, That's Stealing

The September 4, 2006 Japan Times reports Toyota allies warned over low pay by Labor authorities in Japan. Twenty three Toyota suppliers in Toyoda, Japan have been caught cheating their Vietnamese workers of pay by paying below minimum wage. Two hundred workers have been underpaid by nearly $500,000 over 5 more>>

One Point Lesson: Operational Availability vs. Rate of Operation

First a brief Japanese lesson, if I may. 可動率 is Operational Availability and is pronounced "ka-dou-ritsu". 稼動率 is Rate of Operation and is pronounced "ka-dou-ritsu". The pronunciation is exactly the same. Two out of three characters are the same, and the first character happens to have the same sound. This more>>

Lean Blog Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Liker

Visit the Lean Blog to hear Mark Graban's podcast interview of Dr. Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way and Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineerring at the University of Michigan. Find out answers to pressing Lean manufacturing questions such as: "Do you sometimes have to drag senior management out more>>

What is Jishuken?

For people who have worked at Toyota or companies strongly influenced by Toyota, the term "kaizen" is used more in the general sense, closer to philosophy than activity. The term jishuken is used to describe the intentional, workplace-focused activity we call gemba kaizen. There is an important difference in nuance more>>

The Kaizen Turnaround Kings at Danaher

If the U.S.A. needed a poster-child for kaizen and Lean manufacturing success, $20 billion industrial holding company Danaher Corporation would be a good candidate. As this Investor's Business Daily article details, they have been growing steadily over the last decade through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth, and they more>>

There's a Lack of Flow in My Lower Back

I threw my back out a week ago (now accepting 'get well' wishes) and one of the stops on my road to recovery this weekend was a shiatsu clinic in Seattle. Believe it or not this is the first time I tried out this Japanese-style acupressure. Basically an older Japanese more>>

The Environment Where Takt Time is Ideal

The topic of takt time and specifically "how does it apply to me?" seems to be a popular one, based on comments left by readers at this blog entry. The latest from John asks for advice on the environment where TAKT time is ideal and where it is not applicable. more>>

One Key to a Lean Culture: Be Dissatisfied in the Work You Do

We met today with a long-term client of ours who has a small fabrication shop near our office. They make prosthetics (artificial limbs) which are each truly "one of a kind", custom fit to the individual. As a small, growing company with limited resources they haven't been able to pull more>>

One Definition of Lean Manufacturing

During a conference call to plan the agenda for a global meeting of Lean manufacturing leaders at one of our clients, they identified their desire to establish "one definition of Lean manufacturing" at their company. This might seem like a simple thing to do, but with 10 languages spoken in more>>

Lean Manufacturing, Chicken Knife. Six Sigma, Cow Knife.

I learned a new Chinese expression this week from a Six Sigma Master Black Belt from Taiwan. We were discussing how Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma fit together, and how sometimes there can be misunderstandings and conflicts between the two. The expression in Chinese translates as "using a cow knife more>>

I Want to Own a Chinese Sweatshop

Because it's so easy once you own a Chinese sweatshop to hop on an airplane and sell hundreds of thousands of electromechanical parts built in asweatshop to American OEMs. There's no better time to be in this market than today. In between sales trips I would spend time in my more>>

Standard Work is Kaizen Instruction for Managers

Standard Work may be the most important Lean manufacturing tool that you don't know enough about. Built on the three elements of takt time, work sequence and standard work in process (standard WIP), it is the cornerstone of the Toyota Production System. More managers are reading about Standard Work as more>>

What's Next After Lean?

When I saw the article I thought surely one of the other Lean bloggers would jump all over it. Perhaps it was too easy. So I let it slide for a few days. Then I changed my mind. What's next after Lean? Asks the interview with author, consultant and blogger more>>

How Toyota Used IT to Cut New Product Development Time in Half

This is a follow up to a previous post on How Toyota Uses Information Technology (IT) for Kaizen based on an interview with Toyota CIO Amano in the Nikkei BP magazine. This one is titled The Role of the CIO is to Change the Way We Work by Sharing Information more>>

No One Does Lean Like the Japanese

Or at least that's the title of an article in the July 10, 2006 BusinessWeek. It's good to see Lean production being featured in mainstream business magazines like this even if it's likely to stir up the emotions of quite a few Lean manufacturing advocates in the U.S. The story more>>

Some Thoughts on Future State Value Stream Mapping

To paraphrase a military expression “The most dangerous thing in a combat zone is an officer with a map” in Lean manufacturing terms: “The most dangerous thing on the shop floor is a manager with a value steam map.” I have nothing against value stream maps. In fact we offer more>>

Physiognomy & Phrenology vs. Root Cause Analysis & Kaizen

For 27 years the Harbour Report has been measuring and comparing the performance of automobile companies, using metrics such as productivity defined as vehicles per man hour. This reminded me of a pair of dead sciences called physiognomy and phrenology. The former judged your human worth by what your face more>>

Lean Manufacturing in the Construction Industry

Eric Sander Senior Operations Consultant I have recently had the pleasure of working with a young business owner who has discovered the potential of Lean Principles in an industry very much in need of improvement, the building trades. Shone Freeman is the owner of S. R. Freeman Inc., a small more>>

Five Practical Ways to Stay on the Sunny Side of Lean

It’s not easy to read so much about the dark side of Lean. I’ve received e-mails this week from readers who are upset that I would post attacks on Lean manufacturing and kaizen. It’s no fun to learn terrible things about your favorite production system, but growth and learning is more>>

Interview with Darius Mehri, Author of "Notes from Toyota-land"

Today we continue exploring the dark side of Lean as we interview Darius Mehri, author of Notes from Toyota-land. Darius is an American who spent three years working as an engineer in Japan at a Toyota group company. He changed the name of the company in his book to “Nizumi”. more>>

Lean Production Does Not Respect People

Many of those exposing the dark side of Lean production take aim at “Lean production” as defined in the book The Machine that Changed the World. This book compares the Japanese and U.S. automotive industries and identifies best practices. It claims that it is inevitable that all manufacturing eventually become more>>

Human Kanban

Kanban is a material and information flow management tool. They are typically cards attached to containers of parts. The cards contain information about the parts and these cards are reused, traveling with parts. Kanban are used to control the minimal amount of inventory in the system. It is based on more>>

War, Oil and Lean Production

Each day this week we will examine aspects of The Dark Side of Lean. Today’s theme is “War, Oil and Lean Production” – admittedly an extreme Left perspective based on Marxist thought and the examination of a murder-suicide at a Jeep factory in January 2005. Why should we spend any more>>

From the Mechanical Side to the Dark Side of Lean...

This week started with an article about the top 5 reasons for using 3P. Requests from readers took us deeper into SMED and jidoka – all aspects of Lean manufacturing and machines. Without planning it the theme for the week was the “mechanical side” of Lean manufacturing. Next week I more>>

The 5 Steps to Building Jidoka Equipment

Delving deeper into themes related to Production Preparation Process (3P) today I’ll explain what is meant by the “5 Steps of Jidoka” mentioned number sixteen of the 16 Catch Phrases of 3P. Fist some background on jidoka. Jidoka is a pillar of the Toyota Production System and an innovation resulting more>>

Designing Processes to Fit Lean Manufacturing with the 16 Catch Phrases of 3P

My apologies for introducing a new term with out explaining it yesterday. Thanks for asking Ben. The 16 Catch Phrases of 3P are used as guidelines for designing processes according to Lean manufacturing principles of JIT (Takt, Flow, Pull) and Jidoka. As a result of a successful 3P workshop following more>>

The Top 5 Reasons for Using Production Preparation Process (3P)

Last week we had the opportunity to give an online presentation to an automobile manufacturer on the Production Preparation Process (3P) and the top 5 reasons for using it. We discussed the impact Production Preparation Process can have on cutting total cost out of the supply chain. There is also more>>

Tame the Hedgehog, Name it Kaizen

A reader e-mailed me a couple of days ago and said "I personally don't believe all problems can be solved by a group of workers gathered together doing Kaizen" and went on to make a convincing case that specialized knowledge is needed to solve technical problems and when there are more>>

Lean Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering & HRD: No Animals Today

Leon Fok asked me a question today about the differences in Japanese and American management practices and how this affects their kaizen efforts. Leon is the Publications Coordinator at Gemba and has been with us a month. His question is relevant to this week's blogging theme of Industrial Engineering, Human more>>

Bill and Barry Grapple with the Lean Manufacturing Elephant

Part of what started me thinking about Lean manufacturing, kaizen and the role of Industrial Engineering and Human Resource Development was an exchange on one of my favorite bloggers a reader a few weeks ago. There were two themes in this exchange which I found most interesting. The first was more>>

Job Shop Kaizen

A continuous improvement specialist from a UTC group company e-mailed us today with the question “What principles should I look to implement for Job Shop Kaizen?” Kaizen in a job shop should aim to implement the same principles as in a shop that mass produces widgets, or in a clinic more>>

Reflections on Standard Work

The more I visit companies the more I realize how profoundly lacking most of them are in the area of documented standards and procedures, to say nothing of Standard Work. As one of the cornerstones of the Toyota Production System, Standard Work (also Standardized Work) is very different from standardization more>>

TPS from the Horse's Mouth: View the Videos & Take the Quiz!

Toyota has revamped their website area explaining TPS. The thinking and origin of TPS including kanban, just in time and jidoka are explained in simple terms using diagrams to make it easy to understand. It's a pity they don't spend more time on their creative idea suggestion system and standard more>>

You've Gotta Go to Gemba More Often Than That!

True story. Not too long ago I was with another one of our consultants teaching Just in Time principles to a group of newly minted Lean facilitators at one of our client's factories. During one of the breaks one of the engineers motions me over. "Hey, do you wanna see more>>

The Problem of Excessive Executive Compensation for Lean Manufacturing

A Wall Street Journal article today titled Snow Defends Presidents’ Handling of the Economy got me thinking again about the problem of excessive executive compensation for Lean manufacturing. The problem of excessive executive compensation for lean Manufacturing is that it is a kaizen killer. What’s a “kaizen killer?” I will more>>

For Built-in Quality, Simple is Best

As part of our Lean manufacturing benchmarking trip we visited a bus manufacturing plant in Japan with a group of executives from an aerospace company on February 27, 2006. We spent 6 hours observing their Lean manufacturing operation in action and asking about their kaizen efforts and management philosophy for more>>

How Exactly Does Toyota Put People on the Balance Sheet as Assets?

Toyota executives are heard to say that "we put people on the balance sheet as assets" but I had taken this figuratively not literally (philosophy rather than accounting practice). At the moment I have no concrete evidence that Toyota puts people on the asset column of their balance sheet. Toyota's more>>

Put People on the Balance Sheet

According to a Trackback at the end of Bill Waddell's latest inspiring post full of big ideas, there are only 27 hits on Google for the phrase Put People on the Balance Sheet. We'll I'm adding #28. Thanks to the Flying Aqua Badger for calling this t our attention (who more>>

Lean Manufacturing Institute in Iowa: Will They Get it Right?

Iowa state representative Phil Wise wants to spend $250,000 to set up a Lean Manufacturing Institute in the hopes of keeping manufacturing in the state, according to a February 26, 2006 article in The Hawk Eye. The government of Iowa has been progressive when it comes to Lean manufacturing more>>

Work Hard, Complain, and Do Kaizen

The Director of Human Resources for one of our clients had an “ah-ha” moment about her role in supporting Lean manufacturing and how to combine kaizen with respect for people. After we benchmarked a company effectively involving everyone with kaizen, she asked us with great concern “How can we ask more>>

Minding the Length of a Toy Duck's Neck

On the front page of the January 27, 2006 Wall Street Journal there was an article titled In Tot TV Shows, Money is in the Toys. I'm always delighted to find lessons about Lean manufacturing in unexpected places. The article told how the ability to effectively merchandise the toy version more>>

We Don't Need a Big Culture Change at Ford. No Wait, Yes We Do!

The Ford Motor Company presented their restructuring plan called "The Way Forward" today. Ford is planning to shake things up. In CEO Bill Ford, Jr's words: "Here is what we will not stand for: incremental change, avoiding risk, thinking short-term, blocking innovation, tying our people's hands, defending procedures that don't more>>

The "Lean Manufacturing Push" at Chrysler

Selling Lean manufacturing to the world isn't easy with headlines like Chrysler Cuts Trade Workers: In Lean Manufacturing Push, Automaker Also is Reducing Number of Job Classifications at Plants. Chrysler must be getting public relations advice from the same people as Merck. Read the January 22, 2006 Detroit News article more>>

How to Give Lean Manufacturing a Bad Name

One way that is almost guaranteed to stop a Lean manufacturing effort in its tracks is for management to announce that Lean manufacturing will be used to eliminate jobs. It's hard to believe that anyone still does this, but the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck said this in the January 12, 2006 more>>

Gemba's Consulting Work Featured on NIST Website

Gemba's consulting work at Blue Diamond Manufacturing, a division of DeLaval, has been featured at the national website of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Here's a quote by Ken Johnson, the General Manager who had championed the Lean Manufacturing effort at Blue Diamond: "The real measurement of success more>>

Pandemic Preparation: Just in Time or Just in Case?

In a January 12, 2006 Wall Street Journal article (which you can also find on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette) titled Just-in-Time Inventories Make U.S. Vulnerable in a Pandemic raises a question that is very common to organizations first starting out implementing Lean manufacturing. That question goes something like "Just in more>>

Run Faster, Team

There's a great day-after-Thanksgiving Day piece on Joe Ely's Learning About Lean blog. I missed the sports action over the weekend but Joe caught an American football coach's half-time strategy for doing better in the second half: "We just have to run faster." This is funny, and it is sad. more>>

Norman Bodek Blogs about Kaikaku

I've known about Norman Bodek for more than a dozen years by reading the books he published. He brought kaizen to the U.S. by founding Productivity, Inc. He has crossed paths with just about every person who has been or is a part of the history of Lean manufacturing. His more>>

The Perils of Not Going "Genchi, Gembutsu" (On Site, With the Actual Things)

I take a lot of people from many companies to Japan to see lean organizations, such as the Toyota Motor Corporation. One of the themes you see and hear in Toyota is the idea of Genchi (actual place) and Gembutsu (actual things). Toyota wants decisions that relate to a certain more>>

Time for an Ohno Prize?

Bill Waddell asks readers to help him out in answering the question "Why should anyone apply for the Shingo Prize?" in a recent blog entry. Bill points out that now bankrupt Delphi spent around $300,000 to win Shingo Prizes for 24 of their factories. And what was the dividend? This more>>

GM Red Tags Dealer Inventory

Oh the irony. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read the first sentence of the Wall Street Journal article General Motors Unveils New Incentive Program. "Hoping to boost sales, General Motors Corp. announced a new incentives program of "Red Tag" prices on cars and light trucks more>>

Recommended Book: China, Inc. by Ted Fishman

I had some trans-Pacific airplane time recently so I read China, Inc. by Ted C. Fishman. It's not without flaws but it gives good context and perspective about China to much of the news and views you hear on China in the media today. Although the author doesn't talk about more>>

Kaizen Mindset at the Head of Chrysler

The October 24, 2005 Wall Street Journal article At Chrysler, Profits Don't Keep Chief From Cutting Costs has a funny title. Why would profit keep you from cutting costs? Not everyone thinks like Taiichi Ohno, who gave chapter 14 of his book Gemba Keiei (Workplace Management in English) the title more>>

Highlights from an Interview with Masaaki Imai

I came across a January 28, 2005 interview with Masaaki Imai by Gita Piramal, Managing Editor of The Smart Manager, a bi-monthly Indian business management magazine. It is titled The father of Kaizen speaks! and some good questions are posed and the answers are insightful. The title is catchy but more>>

No Pushing

It always horrified me to see perfectly good products being sold at a discount because they were no longer in season or in style. Why fill a dealer lot full of cars, only to sell last year's models at a discount? Why design and produce perfectly good shoes and then more>>

First, it's about People. Second...

There's a very good article about Lean manufacturing implementation in a sewing shop titled Becoming a Lean Manufacturer on Kathleen Fasanella's Fashion-Incubator blog. We don't do much Lean manufacturing consulting in apparel (although one of our long-time clients is a customer furniture manufacturer with a cut & sew operation) so more>>

Robots, Rabbits and Kaizen

There's an interesting article in eWeek titled Little Things Mean a Lot. Kaizen has gone mainstream when an IT magazine uses it to make the connection between the robotic vehicle winning the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 desert race, bugs in enterprise software, and 5S. This year 5 out of 23 more>>

What I Learned from a Marxist about Lean Manufacturing

While on a recent business trip to New York City I met with an old friend of mine who does human rights work. He told me a story of how he persuaded policy makers to take a position on issues of human rights by issuing statements that he knew were more>>

Sitting Work vs. Standing Work in a Lean Manufacturing Workplace

I recently spent 3 days standing on the shop floor while leading a training event for future kaizen facilitators. I spent probably 8.5 hours per day standing, 60 minutes sitting (lunch, breaks), and 30 minutes walking around the 100 square meters occupied by the pilot cell. If I hadn't been more>>

Strong Supervision: The Key to Long-term Kaizen

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Tom Berghan, Lean Manager at Genie Industries. He is an avid student of the Toyota Production System and is always good for practical insights into ground-level Lean implementation. Tom observed that as American manufacturers are outsourcing, Toyota is keeping work in-house. When more>>

The Best Lean Factory in the USA?

According to an article today in the San Antonio Express News, a group people from Toyota visited the York International factory a few months ago to acquire air conditioners for the new Toyota factory. Visiting the factory the Toyota representatives said they had never seen the Toyota Production System applied more>>

What You Can Learn in Traffic about Lean Manufacturing

As a resident of the Puget Sound area of Washington State, the subject of traffic flow is one of high interest to me. Traffic around the Seattle consistently ranks in the worst five in the United States. So a July 1, 2005 Wall Street Journal article titled "How Brief Drop more>>

Qingdao Haier's Bids for Maytag: LeanSigma Goes to China?

Qingdao Haier, the giant Chinese appliance manufacturer along with Blackstone Group and Bain Capital has placed a bid to acquire Maytag. Their bid is $2 per share higher than the competing bid from Ripplewood Holdings. It is far from a done deal, but should Haier acquire Maytag it could have more>>

95% Cost Reduction: That's Kaikaku

According to a June 17, 2005 article in the Financial Times, Toyota plans to cut the cost of hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles by from $1,000,000 to $50,000 by 2015. That is a 95% cost reduction, in 10 years. The Lean manufacturing efforts of most companies would be considered successful more>>

Lean & Assembly Line Throughput Times

Who or what is telling people to look at throughput time (lead-time) through the assembly line when measuring productivity? This number is completely unrelated to assembly line productivity. I have run into the situation where people charged with doing kaizen on assembly lines (industrial engineers, project managers) are measuring the more>>

Making Work As Simple as Possible (but Not Simpler)

I was reminded again this week at how easy it is to make things more complicated than necessary. This is true in so many ways. When asked "What is Lean?" by people who really want to know, it is tempting to explain the entire history from scientific management through Ford more>>

Holding Up the Top Half of the Value Stream Map

One of our clients has 3 people in their Lean department and about 1,000 people in IT. I recently met about 30 of them at a planning meeting for a new factory. They were all very nice people. To be fair there is also a group of manufacturing engineers at more>>

The Forest and the Trees: a Lesson in Change

There is a saying "Not seeing the forest for the trees" which means that you can't see the overall situation because you are too focused on one or more of the smaller details. This is a common challenge for people trying to implement Lean. Traditional manufacturing has been so focused more>>

Teaching Lean without Words

The last few months I have been working with customers in lands where they don't speak English as a first language. This has helped me better understand what my Japanese teachers said and did as they taught kaizen in the U.S. It has also given me some clues on why more>>

Balancing Market Leadership and Social Responsibility at Toyota

It has been an interesting week for Toyota watchers. In response to Chairman Okuda's call to Japanese automobile makers last week to raise prices to give GM some "breathing room", Toyota's operational executives quickly announced that there were no plans to do this. Yet the helping hand from Toyota to more>>

Hyundai Throws Down the Glove

According to news reports today April 29, 2005, Hyundai Motors is predicting that they will be the top quality producer by 2008, displacing Toyota. This is good news for Toyota and their kaizen efforts. Toyota needs a worthy challenger to keep them on their toes so they won't grow complacent more>>

It is Not Enough that Toyota Succeeds, GM Must Also Not Fail

On Monday April 25th 2005 Chairman Hiroshi Okuda of Toyota gave a speech to the Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) in which he said "we are concerned about GM and other automakers" and called on Japanese automakers to help out struggling automakers such as GM and Ford. Chairman Okuda was more>>

Motivating Smart People to Learn about Lean

Sometimes I'm forced to wonder why smart people fight good ideas. Sometimes I find answers. This was true recently when an engineer at one of our clients who was also the project manager for a factory layout redesign stubbornly refused to see the benefits of what the kaizen team was more>>

Build a Lean Enterprise on a Stable Foundation

It's interesting how things come in threes. Recently the issue of stability and how it affects successful Lean implementation came up three times in rapid succession. Following up with a client of ours who is a candy factory (very seasonal), we learned that they were plagued by material outages, unplanned more>>

On-time Delivery Starts with Trust

On a recent trip to Dallas I had the chance to reflect on two different companies facing similar issues with poor on-time deliveries. One was an aerospace company and the other a consumer electronics company. Their production processes were very different. Both are fairly early in their Lean journey but more>>

OEE Basics from Europe

by Charles Lukey What is OEE and what can it do? OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Done correctly, it can show you where your machines are losing money and what you can do about it. OEE is a powerful metric, calculated from three simple numbers: Equipment AVAILABILITY Equipment PERFORMANCE more>>

The Four Elements for Sustaining Kaizen

One of the most frequent questions we encounter form our customers and prospects is the issue of how to sustain the gains made through kaizen and other continuous improvement efforts. In a recent discussion among our consultants, we came to the agreement that the three traditional answers were inadequate and more>>

Keys to Sustaining 5S

Visiting a plant tour at a Midwestern cold rolled steel mill today, I had the chance to reflect on what makes a 5S effort sustained and successful. The owner took me through the mill and showed me a line at the start of the tour that was clean and well more>>

Where to Start the Lean Journey: 5S or with VSM?

From time to time the question comes up, as it did again this week, or where an organization should start their Lean journey. Should they do 5S first and remove the obvious clutter or should they Value Stream Map the entire process and identify key improvement areas and develop a more>>

Why does Toyota Share the Secrets of TPS?

During an overview of TPS given during a Just In Time training class, one of the participants asked why it was that Toyota was willing to share their secrets with their competitors. This is a question worth thinking deeply about. Certainly Toyota has used TPS as part of their PR more>>

Planning a Lean Journey? Take the Toyota Way

A survey of members by the Lean Enterprise Institute's in February of 2004 found that 36% of those surveyed were in the planning or starting phase of Lean implementation. This number may be even higher if the level of requests we receive for training in Lean fundamentals, 5S, and the more>>

TPS is the Thinking People System

A friend of ours who is a Lean Manager for a local aerospace company gave us some insight into how Toyota is presenting TPS to the world these days. Our friend is an avid student of kaizen and recently spent time studying at several Toyota facilities in Kentucky. He informed more>>

A Sense of Urgency Like Smokey & the Bandit

On a recent trip to Brazil, I had the opportunity to visit a 270-employee automotive components manufacturer that is doing Lean. I was very impressed by the openness to change and the energy I felt among both the management and workforce. There was a visual appeal to the factory. There more>>

TPM Metrics & Financial Impact

During a recent kaizen event we reviewed the TPM program for one of our clients. The Operations Manager raised a good question regarding TPM metrics and how to show savings through TPM. During a plant budget meeting, the Controller had questions about the increased expenses and hours spent for maintenance more>>

VP of Lean Enterprise Plays 20 Questions with Lean Managers

We received an odd call today at Gemba. Our Office Manager transferred the call to one of our senior consultants, saying "The person on the line wants to know about Heijunka." The caller whom we'll call Jay to protect his identity was from a U.S. based fortune 500 industrial conglomerate more>>

Keeping Minds Nimble, Bodies Limber at Toyota

Whenever we visit Toyota in Japan there is always at least one member of our study group who makes a comment about the pace at which the assemblers at the engine line and body assembly line work. At Takt Times of around a minute, workers attach parts steadily, never missing more>>

In the News: Overproduction in Detroit

On page one of the October 29th, 2004 Wall Street Journal there was an article titles "Big Dealers Pressure Car Makers To Cut Production: Higher Costs, Thinner Margins Are Forcing Major Sellers to Keep their Inventories Lean". It seems the Detroit automakers' strategy of offering large rebates and no interest more>>

The Power of Ideas from Everyone

Too few companies on the Lean journey have effectively incorporated what is known as "teian" or suggestion schemes for employees' creative ideas. Although kaizen breakthrough activity may seem more dramatic and appealing, it is the slow trickle of creative ideas over many years that has kept companies like Toyota on more>>

The Toyota Job Description: Follow Standards & Find Better Ways

The Toyota managers who share their insights with us on our study missions to Japan tell us that there are two things that are part of every Toyota' employee's job. They are: 1) Follow the standard 2) Find a better way This is the essence of kaizen. These simple yet more>>

One Piece Flow & Standard WIP

I learned a lesson about how easy it is to assume people understand something that sounds simple to you. Near the end of a recent Lean study mission in Japan, one of the participants who is a Six Sigma Black Belt, a dynamic change agent, and a PhD made the more>>

If You Want to Pull, Don't Deliver

We received a nugget of wisdom from Mr. Nojima of the Logistics group of Yazaki (makers of Creform and Japan's largest privately held company) during our October study mission to Japan. Mr. Nojima made a statement that "all work has waste in it". In fact, he made the point that more>>

Why Kaizen Teams Should Be Cross-Functional

The rule of thumb to have a good mix of kaizen team members from different areas is: 1/3rd of the people from the area or process targeted for kaizen, 1/3rd of the people from upstream or downstream processes (customers and suppliers) and 1/3rd from areas that are outside of or more>>

Lean and Green

Of the week of August 22-28 we conducted a private Japan Kaikaku Experience (Lean study mission) which was a great learning experience for everyone. There were many take-aways in Lean management (of which more later). One of my greatest personal 'a-ha' moments was in the area of what leading Lean more>>

Throughput, Bottlenecks, and Capacity: It's All in the TPCBP

One of the most under-appreciated items in the Lean tool bag is the Table of Production Capacity by Process (TPCBP, also known as Process Capacity Table). This one-pager can define the theoretical maximum output of any process by taking into account manual time, cycle time, changeover time, etc. The formula more>>

Lean Fundamental: Do Today's Work Today

Recent examples from clients struggling with non-Lean scheduling methods reminded me of the importance of a fundamental principle of Lean - "do today's work today". This means no late deliveries, capacity equal to demand, and no overproduction. It's really a basic philosophy of business but it's harder than it seems. more>>

Lean Customer Service

There's an often-cited Harvard Business Review statistic that goes something like "Developing a new client relationship costs between six to eight times more than maintaining an existing relationship". Spending six times more on customer retention does not sound Lean. For review, Lean can be boiled down to three rules: #1: more>>

Quality & Law Enforcement: Detection vs. Prevention

During a kaizen workshop the kaizen team identified the lack of value-added content in a final inspection process. This lead to an interesting comparison of quality systems that do not practice Lean manufacturing principles, with the American criminal justice system. In Lean thinking, final inspection is bad. You find the more>>

Kaizen is for Everyone, Everyday

It's encouraging to see that as the Lean buzz expands from manufacturing to healthcare and other industries, some organizations and practitioners are beginning to recognize that there is more to Lean than kaizen events, "Lean tools" such as SMED, TPM, and kanban, or cookie-cutter production systems of the Demand Flow more>>

What is Jidoka? Test Drive a Minivan

I will confess, we own a minivan and I enjoy driving it. It's a great car. If I wasn't already a fan of Toyota products and how they make them, the Sienna would certainly make me a fan. As a Lean guy, I particularly like how they have incorporated Jidoka more>>

Focus on Flow Streamlines 5S

At the core of Lean Enterprise Transformation are the fundamental principles of customer focus, getting rid of the 7 wastes and creating flow. What follows is the alphabet soup of Lean tools in order to achieve this, including but not limited to 5S, TPM, 3P, QFD, 6, SMED, JIT, VSM, more>>

The Lean Factory is Not an Orchestra

The idea of an orchestra is sometimes used to explain Takt Time (the beat of production paced to customer demand). While an orchestra makes sense that the instruments (processes) should be playing music (doing production) to the same beat (customer demand), it doesn稚 make sense in terms of a flow more>>

Pockets of Improvement

We had the opportunity recently to give a Lean Enterprise overview presentation to the parent company of a client. The parent company had recently purchased our client, and they were interested in what Lean could do for them. Our client has achieved a 61% improvement in throughput (dollars shipped per more>>