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Assembly Lines – Count the Cost!
In many high-mix-medium-volume (HMMV) businesses, assembly lines are initiated with a desire to achieve the efficiency of high-volume production while preserving the ability to customize to customer need. However, due to a lack of homework, dreams of efficiency often degenerate into a nightmare of chaos. Product gets stranded, work in process piles up, employees play…
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Mind the Gap! – Anatomy of a Great Work Instruction
On top of being the world’s first subway, the London Underground (aka “The Tube”) also ushered in several innovations in work instructions: Clarity – In the process of developing the Underground map, its developers realized that geographical accuracy would come at the expense of user comprehension. As a result, they ditched accuracy in favor of…
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Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)… Could it stand a diet?
Despite the fact that overall equipment effectiveness CAN be a good measurement, the way it’s generally applied entails a LOT of data collection. Consider a few items required by the frequently-used OEE data collection sheet that’s shown: In addition to distracting the workforce from serving the product, there are problems like: An alternative? Simplifying OEE:…
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The best 5S you’ll ever see… It might surprise you!
In the 1980’s, there was a hit song called “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places” that told the story of a man looking for a long-term relationship in bars. By the singer’s own account, he ultimately found a mate even though he had failed many times before. Before dismissing this moral out of…
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The purpose of a business?
It’s widely believed that the purpose of a business is to make a profit, but does this idea confuse means and ends? Would it be more accurate and helpful to say that a business’s purpose is existence and profit is one means (among many) that ensures this? Thinking of the issue this way would help…
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Continuous Improvement (CI) Hack: Don’t Follow the Waste. Follow the Time!
As opposed to a direct approach, dealing with a problem indirectly is often better. For example, politics has the time-honored rule of “Follow the Money”. In other words, you can try to understand political chaos by analyzing it directly, but money trails unravel the behavior of politicians in a simpler way. Continuous Improvement (CI) is…
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Classical Management – What To Do?
From Deming on, many have pointed out the many problems associated with classical management. Far fewer (zero?) have proposed an alternative that entices decision-makers. And Bob Emiliani (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-emiliani-660a72170/) has identified the reason: Management isn’t interested in messing with a status quo that confers them power and privilege! When you think about it, asking the powerful…
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The Lean Effect – Coin-Activated Shopping Carts
To save money, retailers like Aldi use coin-activated shopping carts. If you asked an average person, they would probably say this is lean. After all, it saves labor! But this explanation leaves out so much! Like the Butterfly Effect, the “Lean Effect” is far-reaching. On top of labor costs, some additional savings include: • Freed-Up…
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Boeing, Going, Gone?
Recently, Boeing’s subpar efforts on the ground have resulted in abysmal outcomes in the air. Although few know all the specifics associated with these problems, there is a consensus that Boeing’s obsession with pleasing investors ultimately led to aircraft safety falling by the wayside. However, the consensus ends on this point as there is a…
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Lean Conundrums
Three founding principles of lean systems are that: • The customer is the sole judge of value• Organizations need to eliminate non-value added activities, and• Organizations need to continually improve. What happens if a customer doesn’t want to pay for process improvements? From first principles, the company must eliminate continuous improvement since the customer assigns…