Tips for Lean Managers

The Lean Journey and the Long Path

A journey is used as a common metaphor for lean deployment. In fact many speak of the implementation of the Toyota Production System and its many non-production sub-processes as “the lean journey”. As a pursuit of zero waste, it is a journey that never ends. We can think of the more>>

Three Ways to Draw Future State Value Stream Maps

A value stream map is a diagram showing the flow of the material, goods or services and also the supporting information flow. It is typically drawn in a clockwise fashion beginning at the customer in the two o'clock position, backwards through the material and information flow until a complete circle more>>

Continuous Improvement vs. Continual Improvement

Most organizations implementing lean principles today do not in fact practice "continuous improvement". What they practice would be better termed "continual improvement". The distinction between continual improvement and continuous improvement is a fine but important one. Continuous means "without interruption" while continual means "frequent, repeated or seemingly without interruption". Continuous more>>

Lean Strategies for Workforce Development in Manufacturing

Last week I attended a meeting of of CAMPS, the Center for Advanced Manufacturing in the Puget Sound. Like many consortia around the U.S. and in other countries, a group of manufacturers, local government, academia and service providers (such as Gemba Research) have banded together to foster innovation, develop business, more>>

Another Way of Learning to See

What do you do when you just can't take people to the gemba as part of your lean training? For example if you are conducting training in a hotel, a university class room or a faraway executive suite, how do you build direct observation into the training? Surprisingly, showing a more>>

Visual Management that Doesn't Really Satisfy

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit Home Depot in an attempt to answer the question, "How many jet-lagged consultants does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Light bulbs successfully obtained, the candy at the checkout counter caught my eye, but not because of hunger. Here's more>>

The Seven Steps to Zero Thinking

There are many misguided ways to explain or to think of lean management. We've discussed some of these in the 10 common misconceptions of lean manufacturing previously. It may not be complete but it is correct to think of lean as the Toyota way and summed up as the pillars more>>

Exploring the "Respect for People" Principle of the Toyota Way

Author, Professor and lean thinker Bob Emiliani has made another important contribution with his new book Practical Lean Leadership. I had the pleasure of reviewing and giving editorial input on this fine book and would recommend it for lean leaders. Most recently Bob wrote an excellent article titled The Equally more>>

Sustainability, the New Buzzword. But Is It Sustainable?

Thanks to polar ice melts, $100 per barrel oil prices, and an inevitable generational shift to people who have grown up hearing about environmental destruction arriving in positions to influence opinion, consumption and policy, sustainability seems to be emerging as the new buzzword. For many years this buzz has been more>>

Lay First the Foundation of Humility

I came across this great quote by St. Augustine. Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. These words work on many levels. When corporate board rooms far removed from the day to day realities more>>

The Pros and Cons of Model Lines for Lean Implementation

In continuous improvement terminology a "model line" is a closely connected series of processes that are the target of focused implementation of lean principles. It derives from the selecting a production line and converting it as the "model" for other production lines in the same factory to emulate. The same more>>

Lean Management Means Shifting from PPT to PPS

One of the fundamental behavior changes required by organizations today in order to successfully practice lean management is to shift from communicating via PPT to communicating via PPS. By PPT we mean Microsoft PowerPoint and by PPS we mean a Practical Problem Solving approach, such as the one practiced by more>>

The Three Habits Required for Built in Quality (Jidoka)

As one of the pillars of the classic TPS house, jidoka represents two distinct but important ideas. The first part of jidoka or "automation with a human touch" involves the harmonization of people and machines. Humans should do human work and machines should do machine work. Automation without human intelligence more>>

A3 Problem Solving as a People Development Process

Too many organizations today have no effective, simple and formalized method of developing front-line leaders. The typical new supervisor or manager is lucky to be given instruction in how their job is done properly, and why. Most often the instruction stops at what to do. And many companies don't even more>>

Management by FACTS!!

These are the words staring at me each day while standing or sitting at my desk: Please feel free to hit Print and place this visual reminder for all to see. Sadly my personal MTBFTFTBF performance (mean time between failures to face the brutal facts) is not improving. Not by more>>

Three of the Lessons Learned from Gemba's 2007 Hoshin Kanri

We are in our pre-planning phase for our 2008 hoshin kanri (policy deployment) here at Gemba. That means we start by reflecting on 2007 and the progress made so far. Without airing too much dirty laundry, here are three of the lessons learned from Gemba's 2007 hoshin kanri efforts, and more>>

Thank You, Thank You, Sam-I-Am

One of my favorite philosophers is Theodor Geisel, a man whose illustrated stories continue to entertain and speaks to children and adults alike. Anyone continuous improvement professional who has read his "Green Eggs and Ham" must respect Sam-I-am, who uses persistence and determination to broaden the tastes and perspectives of more>>

Stumbling on the Lesser Category of Obstacles

The important and influential ideas of W. Edwards Deming include a System of Profound Knowledge, 14 Points for Management, and the 7 Deadly Diseases. While Deming was not an innovator of practical tools to implement Lean manufacturing, he was a thought leader and continues to influence those who champion Lean more>>

Do You Understand the System of Profound Knowledge?

W. Edwards Deming said "without theory there is no learning" while Taiichi Ohno said "understanding means doing." Deming left a great legacy with his Theory of Profound Knowledge which if followed allows the wayward Western organization to transform itself into one that excels and improves continuously. It could be said more>>

Top 10 Lean Education Mistakes (and a Few Recommendations)

Here is a mixed bag of thoughts on common Lean education mistakes and a few recommendations on how to avoid them: #1: Teaching things rather than teaching thinking If one thing can be said about the Lean tools, it is that they work. Yet Lean transformations don't work so well more>>

Lean Specialists, Lean Generalists and the Benefit of Half-Persons

Things seem to come in threes. Or perhaps we become satisfied and stop counting at three when in fact the particular phenomena we are counting in fact persists. This week three separate organizations asked us on three separate occasions about the appropriate number of Lean specialists in order to have more>>

How the Skill Matrix Enables Downstream Pull

Downstream pull, one piece at a time, works not only for inventory control by signaling production or material movement, but also for maintaining smooth balance and flow of work done by people. This can be manual factory work such as assembly and shipping, transactional or administrative work, healthcare-related processes, or more>>

Job Breakdown Sheets for Teaching TPS

Job Breakdown Sheets are used as part of Toyota's approach to OJT (on the job training), called Job Instruction. A Job Breakdown Sheet details the Major Steps, Key Points and Reasons for the key points. Having a Job Breakdown Sheet creates confidence in the instructor as well as the trainee more>>

Three Key Points to Kaizen Your Communication

How well do you communicate what is truly important to your peers and to the people you teach? How often do you say "These three points are important. Write them down"? Here are three key points to effective communication: The three points to kaizen your communication 1) Let the listener more>>

The Importance of "So What?" in A3 Kaizen

One of the things that makes Toyota-style problem solving so effective is the insistence on true root cause analysis and countermeasures. In simple terms this is known as "asking why 5 times" or "5 why". Instead of 5W1H (what, where, when, who, why how) which may be good for journalism, more>>

Q&A During a Recent Gemba Walk

Gemba walks are great fun. But it's become clearer to me only recently that they can be awkward at first to the leader in transition from traditional style to Lean management. With permission and without revealing the identity of the leader (Mr. C), here is an excerpt from his questions more>>

Top 10 Improvement Tools Named After Lean Sensei

1. Ohno Circle Taiichi Ohno was the Toyota executive largely responsible for structuring and implementing the system known today as the Toyota Production System over four decades after World War II. Ohno was known for drawing a chalk circle around managers and making them stand in the circle until they more>>

New Metric for Lean Leadership: MTBFTFTBF

Those of you who are familiar with TPM or other progressive maintenance systems will recognize MTBF. The acronym MTBF refers to the mean time between failures. For products, MTBF is a reliability rating indicating the expected failure rate of a product after a certain number of hours of use. For more>>

Your Lizard Brain Wants to Help You Be Lean

An article on July 1, 2007 in LiveScience titled Study Reveals Why We Learn From Mistakes sheds light on why visual management and the habit of genchi genbutsu is so important to problem identification and learning. Once again, brain science teaches why Lean works. The article starts out: Researchers have more>>

Intuition, Information and the Toyota Production System

There are quite a few things that are counterintuitive about the Lean management system known as TPS. They are all fairly simple things, but hard to do since they feel wrong to people who have not been swimming in the waters of TPS for years. In fact, the whole TPS more>>

The Secret to Calculating Takt Time in Your Head, Fast

People are always amazed when I do takt time calculations lickety-split in my head. Here's my secret: it's the result of a lot of practice with doing math in the head, and memorizing a few nifty net available time numbers. This formula: Takt time = Net available time per shift more>>

What Does the Observer Have to Do with the Observed?

The fact that light is both a wave and a particle at the same time has been puzzling physicists for decades. More recently, managers have been puzzled by the fact that work is both value and waste at the same time. This wonderful video explains what is called the double more>>

Job Instruction for Lean Transformation Leaders

The new book by David Meier and Jeffrey Liker titled Toyota Talent is full of nuggets. Perhaps the best thing I got out of the book is an explicit understanding of the four-step approach to teaching that is Job Instruction. Now I see how Job Instruction is built-in to how more>>

A Standard Way of Starting Your Day

Having a standard way of starting your day has been written about in many personal productivity books, blogs and promoted by self-improvement gurus. Yet why is this so hard? In one word, variation. In some ways it is personal standard work, the basis for kaizen, challenged by the lack of more>>

How to Reduce the Distance Between Management and Gemba

This issue, and how it is addressed, is one of the main factors separating successful and sustained lean transformations from those that are not. Let's say the distance between management and the gemba is value D and the quality, quantity and speed of information received by management is value I. more>>

Announcing the 5S Challenge Winners!

Thank you Konrad, Ron, Robert, Nancy, Chris, Eric, Jason, Rajdeep and Dee for your thoughtful answers to the question "which of the 5S is hardest and why?" There was a lot of emphasis in on keeping it going, the 5th S known as sustain, shitsuke, self-discipline or stick-to-it. A number more>>

Zero Equals Seven in the Kaizen Mind

Taiichi Ohno taught us that even when we think "there is no waste here" you can find at least 7 types of waste. He was known to carry a piece of chalk around and draw circles around managers who could not see these wastes. Woe be to the manager who more>>

To KPO or Not to KPO?

Here is a bit of heresy that has been rolling around my brain lately: having a KPO / Six Sigma Competency Center / Office of Operational Excellence / Continuous Improvement Office hurts rather than helps a Lean effort. Best case, these Kaizen Promotion Offices can rapidly do the in-depth study more>>

Seek the Simple Solution from Many People

There is an apparent conflict between two of the ten commandments of improvement that has been bothering me for a while. It is the kind of problem that goes away as soon as you stop thinking about it. But I think it may represent something that is at the root more>>

How to Use a Kaizen Newspaper

Chris asked: Are there rules for what goes on a kaizen newspaper so it does not become a massive action item list? A "massive action item list" should be cause for celebration. A full kaizen newspaper is a good thing. The fact that this is a concern might say something more>>

Ten Reasons Why One Piece Flow Will Not Work

Rather than insisting that one piece flow will work, we like to ask clients why one piece flow will not work for them. Here are some of the most common reasons we hear, and some ways we respond: 1. We can’t get needed materials in quantity, in quality or in more>>

What Would You Do If You Had No __?

One my favorite phrases used by my Japanese teachers’ was “__ ga nakattara dosuru?” or “What would you do if you had no__?” When I heard this I knew we were in for some fun - of watching someone stretch their mind. "What would you do if you had no__?" more>>

The Best Visual Control in the World

Day two of kaizen instruction on the shop floor, I came across the best visual control in the world. All of these years it's been right in front of me. It's the change in the human face known as the smile. The people that I am working with this week more>>

A3 Report Title: PICK UP YOUR TOYS!!

I need some parenting help. As the A3 report below will show, our young kids are slow at picking up their toys. The older one is old enough to slow down on purpose and play games with us, and the younger one is young enough or has the personality to more>>

What I Learned Today of Value

See it through. Delay if you must, but don't retreat. Follow up until you get an answer, good or bad. Check again. Get it done. Only then, start the next thing. more>>

Skill Matrix Tutorial, Part 1

We receive a lot of questions on this blog about something called the Skill Matrix and how to use it. It seems to be an area of high interest so I will write about it more regularly. The Skill Matrix is a very useful visual management tool. It shows at more>>

The Largest Room in the World

What is the largest room in the world? I just heard this yesterday. Any guesses? Think about it. Or give a hint to other readers if you know the answer. I'm not telling. more>>

The Art of Nemawashi

Nemawashi is the building of support for a project through advance communication and consensus. The Japanese term nemawashi (根回し) comes from "to dig around the roots" in order to prepare a plant for transplant. Without proper nemawashi, a bonsai tree transplanted to new soil may die. Many people first hear more>>

The Kaizen Mindset Requires Starting with Scarcity

We have been fortunate to visit Ricoh factories in Japan and in my opinion Ricoh is an excellent company and a great example of implementing the Toyota Production System outside of the automotive industry. They are also a leader in reducing the negative impact they have on the environment as more>>

Build a Workplace You Can Be Proud Of

People talk about pride. It's a funny thing. I've never seen a "pride" poster in a factory or workplace that had their 5S down, good visual management in place and smiling employees. Maybe they 5S-ed the pride posters. Or maybe I haven't been around enough. I've heard some say that more>>

Give Me 60 Minutes and I'll Give You a Lean Transformation

That's 60 minutes from everyone in supervisory position and above, at least once every three weeks, forever. If that's too much to ask, save yourself two minutes and stop reading now. There's something called "stand in the circle" and although it might be known by other names, it is said more>>

How Do You Sustain Improvement?

"How do you sustain improvement?" This is one of the most common questions posed to us about kaizen and Lean. I used to think this question required a thoughtful pause and a serious three-part reply. But lately I ask "How do you not sustain it?" Whether you have an inventory more>>

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today's Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a memo questioning whether their drive for growth and efficiency has diluted the customer more>>

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 3

How do you motivate the people on the trailing edge of the bell curve? The so-called "anchor draggers" or CAVE people tend to attract the most attention or concern during the process of change. I wish we had time to bring everyone along and find ways to motivate those of more>>

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 2

How to motivate people to change? A day later and I still don't know, but Taiichi Ohno's "game of wits" comes to mind (see chapter 25 of Workplace Management). A game is something that is fun. Most of us are motivated, at least in part, by fun. In order to more>>

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 1

How to motivate people to change? That question was asked recently. It's a good question and one that we should not assume we know the answer to. It is not a question that should be addressed in your organizations by professional instructors, consultants or highly paid motivational speakers on a more>>

Being an Improvement Agnostic

A while ago my colleague and I were doing our best imitations of slick salesmen in front of a group of leaders from a small, local manufacturing firm. We were fired up after a tour of their factory, confident that space could be cut to a third and productivity doubled more>>

How to Put Kaizen into Your Culture

These are the two steps for how to put kaizen into your culture. First, communicate with your people until you have a common agreement and 100% alignment on these principles: The reason we can make our living is because we serve our customers. Customers pay for value, as defined by more>>

Hansei on Hansei

As Taiichi Ohno said "Check is hansei" when referring to the third step of PDCA. I am doing hansei on the previous blog post on the topic of hansei. I did not think deeply enough about what "hansei" means and what "reflection" means. The more I use the word "reflection" more>>

Dilbert Rips Six Sigma

Kent Bradley from Gemba handed me a Dilbert cartoon yesterday poking fun at Six Sigma. Here is the script: [Point-Haired Boss standing next to "SIX SIGMA" slide] Our company has decided to try something new. [Dilbert] New? Six Sigma was developed in the 80s. [Point-Haired Boss] It's new to us. more>>

Thankful but Dissatisfied

Reflecting on this Thanksgiving holiday, I have a lot to be thankful for but I am dissatisfied. It has been a challenging year in many ways, both personally and in business. I am thankful that there are so many problems in front of me that need kaizen. I am dissatisfied more>>

What is a Kamishibai?

Earlier this year I heard the term kamishibai (紙芝居) used in the context of the Toyota Production System for the first time from a Canadian former Toyota manager during a LEI seminar. At the time I thought it was a gratuitous use of a Japanese term for a visual management more>>

Why Six Sigma is Essential for Kaizen Success

Genchi gembutsu means that in a Lean organization improvement must be done at the closest point to the value-adding workplace (gemba) following the scientific method based on facts. I've liked genchi gembutsu and management by fact (as opposed to management by statistics) since it is easier to find the root more>>

The Toyota Preparation System or the “Bank of Preparation”

Toyota is great at doing what appear to be common sense things extraordinarily well. They take the time to do preparation, then execute quickly. There is a reference to this in Jeffrey Liker’s The Toyota Way where (I am paraphrasing) he says a typical company will spend three months in more>>

Kaizen vs. Kaikaku

While kaizen has been in the English language management vocabulary for a couple of decades, kaikaku is a relative newcomer. Kaizen in its various forms has been very common among Japanese companies for a long-time, kaikaku has been less common. Kaikaku, or specifically transforming the operational model towards the Toyota more>>

Reflection (Hansei) is the Noblest Teacher

Hansei is a Japanese word meaning "reflection" as in reflecting on ideas or experiences in order to learn from successes or failures to improve oneself in the future. It is a key step in kaizen, both personal improvement and for process improvement activity in business. Taiichi Ohno liked to say more>>

Don't Talk to Us About Toyota

"Don't talk to us about Toyota" demanded a new customer recently. Their reasoning was that Toyota's level was unachievable for them. This client does not build cars. But they were asking for world class benchmarks and case studies of the best companies in the world. Without mentioning Toyota. What's a more>>

The View from the Other Side: Stop the Kaizen!

The Job Schmob blogger gives us (kaizen people) a view from the other side in his (her?) October 2, 2006 post The Business of Change Management and Corporate Propaganda: Part 1. The Job Schmob blog person takes issue with a quote by marketing guru Seth Godin in a December 1999 more>>

Operational Excellence Requires Kaizen and Respect for People

Kaizen is easy. Respect for people is hard. I don't know why. I just don't see a lot of companies talking about and doing the latter. Talking about only, perhaps. What does respect for people really mean, anyway? At Toyota it is interesting to note that the clearest way respect more>>

Copy + Kaizen = Yokoten

Here's my understanding of one of the winning behaviors of Toyota, namely copying and improving on kaizen ideas that work. We'll call this yokoten since it's more precise than "copy" or "horizontal deployment" or "sideways expansion". It's not a vertical (top-down) requirement to copy as Intel might deploy it in more>>

My Early Kaizen Days

Thirteen years ago this month I nervously stepped into the lobby of the Sheraton at Hartford, Connecticut airport. It was the first day of my first Shingijutsu kaizen event. I did not know what to expect. I remember the first words out of the mouth of Mr. Nakao to me more>>

One Sign of a Lean Culture: Kaizen or Get Out

I had lunch yesterday with a local client of ours. He owns a small factory that employs about 30 people. The products they make are fairly simple and the processes are not complex. They have made some big changes in the factory layout to improve workflow, they have removed some more>>

What Experience Do You Have in My Industry?

"What experience do you have in my industry?" I heard this again today for the nth time, with n being a number sufficiently large such that n x $1 would buy a nice lunch for everyone who reads this today. The "industry experience" objection to taking help from consultants is more>>

Hoshin is 5S for Your Head

Busy, busy days. It's days like these that it becomes more important to avoid working harder, longer and instead take a precious moment out of your day to examine whether what you are doing is really adding value towards the ultimate goal, or not. Crisis creates focus, so long as more>>

Workflow Design: Horizontal Handling vs. Vertical Handling

Here’s a follow up to a previous post of the one point lesson on operational availability vs. rate of operation. A reader pointed out that pictures and not just words would be helpful, so in answer to a related question about multi-process handling, here are a few words plus two more>>

That's What I Call Cosmic Irony

What do you call it when a meeting of the Lean manufacturing leaders from around the globe gets cancelled at the last minute by the senior leadership of the organization, citing “business needs”? I call it cosmic irony. One of our consultants was scheduled to participate in a such workshop more>>

I Mean It. Be Dissatisfied in the Work You Do

Reader Jeff made a good point in a comment he left a end of one of the articles here at Panta Rei. I suggested replacing "Take pride in the work you do" signs in the workplace with "Be dissatisfied in the work you do" signs, more appropriate for a kaizen more>>

Error Proof the Pokayoke to Build in Quality

In order to have a just in time production system function properly you need to work towards zero defects and build in quality to every process. Otherwise the lack of extra buffer inventory will shut down the material flow when a defect is produced. One of the ways to build more>>

Getting in the Habit of Change

People often say that sustaining the gains of kaizen and Lean manufacturing is the hardest thing. How well you sustain kaizen is really about how well you adapt to change. Kaizen and Lean manufacturing are not "one time and done" types of things. When people say 'we tried Lean and more>>

Kaizen Secrets of the Toyota Mind

There have been many books on the bestseller list with variations on the theme of “how to become a millionaire”. A fellow named T. Harv Eker rolled through Seattle a few years ago and gave a free seminar on the subject. It seemed like an interesting way to pass an more>>

Spending Money to Hinder Leadership

I recently went to Japan with a group of directors from an aerospace company to see Toyota and other leaders of Lean. One of the results of the trip was that the director or engineering really saw the waste walls cause in the office and he decided to eliminate offices more>>

Copy This: How AIRSpeed Copies Kaizen Ideas

Every so often the NAVAIR AIRSpeed organization gives me a reason to sing their praises. I have a lot of respect for the kaizen activity that's going on there and how they communicate it. They really seem to be getting it right. Today's lesson is in what the Japanese call more>>

Kaizen Consultant Asks: "Why is this Here?"

Last month I joined two kaizen consultants from our team to do an opportunity assessment at a tier one automotive company. It's good to see kaizen and Lean manufacturing efforts increasing at automotive factories in the United States. It's also interesting to see what people choose to call the things more>>

Before Kaizen, Ask "If You Had Enough, Would You Know?"

I visited the 35th annual Seattle Folklife Festival yesterday, enjoying a couple of hours with my family before diving into a very busy couple of weeks. There was great music, passable weather and more hippies than you can shake a stick at. There was also a lesson to be had more>>

Going Back to School for Hoshin Kanri

I've taught Hoshin Kanri half a dozen times to clients but I struggle to put it into practice at Gemba. You won't be interested in hearing my excuses, and it's my fault that we've had Hoshin Kanri annual plans in place for each of the last two years but not more>>

Kaizen Means Thinking "Now Things are the Worst Ever"

There has been a lot of discussion about "failing to become Lean" on blogs, in newsgroups and in books lately. Reading press releases and financial statements of many less-than-truly-Lean companies, they would like the analysts and shareholder to think that Lean is doing good things for their share price. Yet 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>>

In Defense of Mr. Rogers

I've been enjoying Bill Waddell's tough-and-straight postings lately on the Evolving Excellence blog. I had to stop and think awhile after reading last week's posting titled Ohno, Shingo and Bobby Knight. I have a lot of respect for Fred Rogers, Taiichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo, and Bobby Knight. There are things more>>

Skill Matrix Enables Suggestion System

We received a call from a kaizen facilitator who was concerned that their suggestion system was losing steam. We went to their Gemba to find out what was going wrong. This company was receiving plenty of suggestions. They had copies of Norman Bodek's Quick & Easy Kaizen workbooks and kept more>>

Client tells Gemba: "We're Wasting Our Money by Paying You"

Earlier this week I had a chance to join one of our consultants on a follow up visit to one of our clients. We were there for a Lean transformation progress check and to make training and kaizen project plans for 2006. We reviewed their Lean manufacturing efforts so far more>>

Design Process Around People

The issue of policing the time people spend on bathroom breaks at Ford sparked discussions online and in forums this week. The Lean Manufacturing Blog and the Superfactory blog both posted thoughtful commentary. Ford management reported that workers are taking more than their allotted 48 minutes per shift on bathroom more>>

Lean Applied to Food Service

I recently had lunch at Babe's Chicken Dinner House in Roanoke, Texas. It was a surprising place to find Lean principles at work. They have a streamlined product offering with two items on the menu, fried chicken and chicken fried steak. They operate on a pull system. They cook the more>>

Small Companies Playing With Big Company Rules

This is something I've noticed with a few of the sites I've been visiting lately. They are all part of a huge global, well-respected company and yet the Lean implementation is not as robust as we would like to see it. A lot of us are familiar with the phrase 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>>

Work Content for Line Leads

A line lead (or team leader) is defined as a leader of 5- 6 people in an area. There's a lot of discussion on what a good line lead is. What is a good mix of work content for line leads? One school of thought is that the lead should more>>

Three Useful Phrases for Kaizen

Finding myself in challenging discussions while coaching "change adverse" individuals from time to time, I try to make myself humble and ask "What would sensei do in this situation?" I cycle through the words and actions of Mr. Nakao, Mr. Nagata or Mr. Shimbo of the Shingijutsu Company. Usually I more>>

Developing Team Leaders through Kaizen

Many companies ask some variation of the question. "Why aren't we seeing bottom line results after the kaizen event improvements?" There is more than one answer, but I recently came across a good illustration of one typical situation. This manufacturer of transportation equipment has been doing kaizen for a while more>>

Notes from the Field: Implementation and Continuity Safety Nets

Change is hard. What a cliche. But it has achieved its high rank in the pantheon of "cliche-dom" because its underlying reality is so very common. A fact multiplied many-fold during virtually any serious kaizen event. Cold hard fact: not everyone either wants to or is equipped to adapt to more>>

What About the 8th Waste?

When learning to implement Lean manufacturing or Lean office principles one of the essentials is to develop a deep understanding of the 7 types of waste. Many people start working with the tools right away, value stream mapping or doing 5S activity without clearly linking this activity to waste reduction. 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>>

Kaizen Event Fait Accompli

The title may throw you for a moment, with French, English, and Japanese all in one. The phrase 'fait accompli' is French for "an accomplished and presumably irreversible deed or fact". I realized during a recent kaizen event that fait accompli is a good phrase to explain a key reason more>>

The Perfect World or Our Ideal World?

Iain Johnstone Operations Consultant TPS is a set of tools and philosophies that model the perfect world. What some organizations, their management team and Lean consultants forget is that we need to strive for our ideal world. The perfect world is out there and whenever I am training anyone on more>>

The Power of Mapping

Iain Johnstone Operations Consultant During a recent trip to a client, myself and a team of 5 from various manufacturing departments began mapping the first three weeks of their build process. The product is very complex and labor intensive with an average of 5500 hours of cycle time during an 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>>

Value Stream Maps & Right Brain Thinking

With the increasing commitment of major firms to TPS-based Lean initiatives, Value Stream Maps are increasingly becoming items seen in board rooms as well as kaizen team rooms. George David, Chairman and CEO of United Technologies is said to have created a minor storm of activity across UTC divisions when more>>

Genchi Gembutsu

As we being a new year, there have been humbling reminders of one of the fundamentals of the Toyota way, namely Genchi Gembutsu. In short this means "go to the actual scene (genchi) and confirm the actual happenings or things (gembutsu). Secretary of State Colin Powell returns from the ruins 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>>

Ownership Generates Success

Bear McLaughlin, Operations Consultant October, 2004 During my journeys of training Office and Manufacturing Lean tools and techniques, I致e come across the same key in any business environment, OWNERSHIP, no ownership, means no success. How do you generate ownership and what does that even mean? It is much more than 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>>

Selling Autonomous Maintenance to the Machine Operator

A client of ours has recently begun implementing TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) as the natural next step in their Lean journey. Their goals were to lengthen mean time between failures (MTBF) as well as replace time spent on reactive maintenance with improvement maintenance. As a first step, there was a 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>>

Kaizen: Start with Production or "The Office"?

Most Lean transformations and kaizen programs start at the Gemba (workplace, actual place where value is created) which for manufacturers is the factory. A question Lean Champions often come across is "Why are we starting kaizen with the workers and not with the office?" In many cases the kaizen team more>>

Flow Counterclockwise for a Good Reason

I came across an interesting article while riding the bullet train in August during our last Japan Kaikaku Experience (Lean study trip). On page 69 of the September 2004 of Wedge magazine (Vol. 16 No. 9) there was an article by science writer Hideaki Fukami on the origins of the more>>

Making Standard Work Stick

During a recent sales presentation to a prospective client, the issue of Standardization came up. This company has multiple factories around the globe and is struggling with a lack of harmonization between them. As an example, different lines in different factories would use their own settings on SMT lines, rather more>>

Takt Time for Executives

We recently had the opportunity to host 15 top executives from a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company for 3 days of Lean training, benchmarking tours, and strategizing. During this process we gained insight into Takt Time. These executives were all knowledgeable in Lean, many of them having sponsored dozens of kaizens 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>>

Kaizen Events Build Buy-in

During a dinner meeting I had the chance to exchange views on the progress of the Lean effort at a client company with the President. They are early in the process, having trained all employees and having done two kaizens and are on their third. I felt things were progressing more>>

Kaizen is Like Climbing a Mountain: Drive Stakes in Along the Way

The team leader of a kaizen project, we'll call him Tim, was very disappointed in the weeks immediately after a kaizen. Tim was the supervisor of the area, and when he checked in on the machine operators he found that there was inventory building up again and some of the more>>

Making Sense of Takt-Flow-Pull

We've found that there's a wall that's people have to get past when learning to think Lean. Teaching the 7 Wastes and 5S as eliminating searching, motion, errors, (7W) etc. by reorganizing the work area and making it more visual (5S) strikes most people as 'common sense', and they get more>>

Lean Practitioners Beware: You May be Tampering

In a conversation with Daniel Sloan, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, CEO of Evidence-Based Decisions and author of Profit Signals, I learned about a Deming idea known as “tampering”. What I learned is that we, as Lean practitioners are at risk of making things worse, not better, if we make 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>>