Oct 26 2012
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
A PBS news story about how a visit to Toyota in Japan 10 years ago shamed Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle into eliminating waiting room. It does not give details on how they actually did it. We can only hope that they actually eliminated waiting itself…
See on www.pbs.org
Oct 26 2012
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
This is about Toyota’s newest plant in North America, in Tupelo, MS. It has several surprising features, such as:
“Instead of the usual air hoses, electrical wiring and other assembly equipment hanging above their heads, everything comes up from the floor. That clears the space above workers for what Toyota calls a “blue sky” approach, where everything is at or near eye-level.”
The reason you usually do the opposite is that it gives you more flexibility to change the layout. Utilities provided from above are easier to relocate than if they come out the concrete floor.
See on djournal.com
Oct 26 2012
In the SME Society of Manufacturing Engineers discussion group on LinkedIn, Sam MacPherson asked for comments on the idea that Lean’s greatest need is he willingness and ability to lead.
Following is the response I posted:
“Willingness and ability to lead” is too generic, and not what I would answer if asked what Lean’s greatest need is.
I look at it from a manufacturing perspective. As Art Smalley pointed out in his 2006 Shingo Prize conference presentation, what goes by the name of Lean in the US gives short shrift to the engineering of production lines. To me, the greatest need still is to put the proper focus on it.
Applications outside of manufacturing are not my focus, but I think that, likewise, the greatest need is to focus on the core of the activity. When the Gilbreths worked on hospitals 100 years ago, they didn’t try to streamline peripheral functions like billing; instead, they worked on the design of operating rooms, and came up with the now standard way, where nurses prepare tools and pass them to surgeons.
Of course, top management must be willing and able to lead, but it has to be in the right direction, to put the focus on the way work is done. And it is tricky.
On the one hand, Art Byrne tells CEOs to personally participate in Kaizen events, which certainly is a way to convey the message that this activity matters.
On the other hand, it can lead the organization to overemphasize Kaizen events, at the expense of other types of necessary actions. It is also impossible for other employees to forget who is on the team.
Generally speaking, whether on a Kaizen even or a Gemba walk, if the CEO expresses an idea on a technical issue, most will agree because it comes from the CEO, and a few will make a point of disagreeing, because it comes from the CEO. In neither case does the idea receive an objective assessment.
Oct 26 2012
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
-Honorees have diverse talents and skills, a common commitment to excellence.
See on www.plantengineering.com
Oct 23 2012
Thomas Spornberger, in the TPS Only group on LinkedIn, started a discussion on the following topic:
“TOC (Theory of constraints) and how Toyota solves the bottleneck problem
As TOC was developed by Goldratt in the 80s, focused mainly on Software, now I’m curious how Toyota solved the problem of having bottlenecks in production, the supply chain, IT etc.
What is Toyota’s Panacea for eliminating bottlenecks in TPS? JIT (or maybe we should use JOT) is very vulnerable to it, just look back at the problems that arose from the Tsunami Desaster.”
It has had 55 responses to date, to which I added my own this morning:
In 1986, I was trained by Eli Goldratt’s organization to implement their OPT production scheduling software, which was the first incarnation of TOC. My first project afterwards was to implement it in an aluminum foundry that produced castings for the auto industry, had 40% of its diecasting machines down at any time, and took 40 hours to change a dies in any of these machines. It was obvious that scheduling was the least of their worries, but it was what corporate management had decided to focus on.
As OPT was not a viable software product, Goldratt’s organization soon dropped it to focus on the “thoughtware” behind it, repackaged as TOC. I read The Goal at the time, and, later, Theory of Constraints, and found these theories simplistic and misleading. Simplistic because they fail to account for the variety of challenges facing manufacturing operations; misleading, because they make managers believe that you can make all the improvements you need without moving one machine or doing any engineering improvement. One point I remember from The Goal was focusing “setup men” on the bottleneck machine; the idea of improving setups so that they could be executed by production operators was not considered.
Most of the above comments, about balancing, heijunka, and kanban, are about assembly, and one key characteristic of assembly work is that it is almost infinitely divisible. You can break it down into elements that are as small as you want and reassign them between stations backwards and forwards. This is why an assembly line does not have bottlenecks, and a book on assembly does not need the word.
Machining and fabrication are a different story, because there are many cases where it is technically impossible to reassign work between machines. There are also enormous differences in cost between machines, for example between a drill press and a gear hobbing machine. As a consequence, a gear cutting cell has a bottleneck machine that you try to keep as busy as possible, and supporting machines that you try to make sure are available when needed but don’t care if they are used only 10% of the time.
Capacity planning and production scheduling in such a cell is centered on its bottleneck machine, but. on the scale of a cell, it is not complex. If the cell is dedicated to a product, it is trivial; if not, the key challenge is to achieve quick changeover for the entire cell so that it can support heijunka for the entire plant.
TOC is a one-trick pony. TPS is a system that addresses the full variety of manufacturing challenges found in the automotive supply chain, and it has been successfully adapted to other contexts with the “Lean” label.
Oct 27 2012
Learning from a consultant versus getting certified
In the Lean Six Sigma Worldwide discussion group on LinkedIn, Fong Lee Ho asked the following question:
To which I answered as follows:
Certification will do none of that. You should only pursue certification if you are looking for a job and need it as a resume enhancer.
More more details on the value of certification, see Certification Shmertification!
For a review of the Lean body of knowledge and five leading certification programs, see The Lean Body of Knowledge.
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By Michel Baudin • Management 5 • Tags: Consultant, Lean Body of Knowledge, Lean BOK, Sensei