Blog clippings

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Jan 24 2022

Does Amazon Use Lean, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma?

In 2019, Christoph Roser posted six articles on his blog about the inner workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers, based on visits to locations in the US and Germany. His blog is called AllAboutLean but the word “Lean” appears nowhere in his articles about Amazon. “Six Sigma” does not appear either, and Christoph does not mention meeting any black belt.

In addition, in  Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (2021), Amazon alumni  Colin Bryar and Bill Carr make no reference to Lean, and all they report about Six Sigma is using DMAIC to define metrics.

Yet you find some published descriptions of Amazon as a showcase for Lean, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma but, if you consider them without confirmation bias, the evidence is underwhelming. The keywords appear, along with a few more, like “Operational Excellence” or “Scrum.”

Based on the small amount of published data, the leaders of Amazon, starting with Jeff Bezos, “learned a bunch of techniques, like Six Sigma and lean manufacturing and other incredibly useful approaches.”

In other words, they learned everything they could get their hands on while staking out uncharted territory. Then they developed their own system. Now they are sharing with outsiders a few homilies but no details, as is their privilege. Their system is to retail as Toyota’s is to manufacturing. It’s not reducible to Lean, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma.

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Dec 17 2020

QRQC at Valeo | Rob van Stekelenborg

“Recently, Michel Baudin […] invited practitioners to further contribute to the knowledge on QRQC, among which myself. As I feel a brief answer on LinkedIn would not do justice to the richness of QRQC, I decided to dedicate a post to the topic. Without ambition, however, to try and be complete in this post, which I feel is not possible with a vast topic like QRQC. But let’s dive in and share some of my experiences with and views on QRQC, the way I experienced and lived it at Valeo at the time.”

Source: Dumontis

Michel Baudin‘s comments: Thanks to Rob van Stekelenborg for stepping up and sharing all of these details.

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Apr 30 2020

The Impact Of Social Distancing On Assembly Operations | John Shook | LEI

 

Testing temperature measurement setup

“Problems and Countermeasures at GE Appliances and Herman Miller:

  • Problem 1: Clarify what is the problem to solve 
  • Problem 2: Ensure each member is coming to work healthy 
  • Problem 3: Make assembly line work safe for social distancing 
  • Problem 4: Maintain social distance for Team Leader Andon response 
  • Problem 5: Apply social distancing to other, non-assembly line, work areas 
  • Problem 6: Resolve the many other safety concerns that are cropping up 
  • Cleaning surfaces 
  • Cleaning air – Ventilation 
  • PPE
  • …”

Source lean.org

Michel Baudin‘s comments:  John Shook’s writings are usually more polished. This one feels like notes from conversations with managers from GE Appliances (GEA) and Herman-Miller (HM). It goes straight into the heart of the matter with no lead or introduction and with acronyms that are not defined but easy to decypher, like “TT” for Takt Time. This tone actually infuses the article with a sense of urgency. It reads like an unvarnished look at what is actually happening and it contains many informative photographs of the shop floors.

For each problem, GEA and HM give pointers on making assembly work safe from COVID-19 but I have a few questions the article does not address:

  1. How do you protect assembly workers from infection through the products? Social distancing protects them from each other’s breaths but an infected worker’s hand can contaminate a workpiece. The workpiece can then, in turn, infect the next worker’s hand. The article does not discuss means of disinfecting workpieces between stations.
  2. What does distancing do to assembly operations? For decades, we have been bringing workstations closer together, to make it easier for operators to help each other and run multiple stations when the volume is lower. Now, we have to go in the opposite direction.

#socialdistancing, #assembly, #leanmanufacturing, #covid19

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Jan 13 2020

New Year Lost and Found | John Shook | Planet Lean

“As many of us are wont to do, I reflected a bit over the holidays. As always, it wasn’t hard to find ample fodder on both sides of the hope vs despair ledger: we have so much cause for concern around us, but also plenty to rejoice about. […] This year’s reflection confirms what I’ve found over many years: when seeming to lose something of great value, if you look you can find that something new has come along to offer welcome and perhaps unexpected value.[…]

As a noteworthy attempt to shed light on the lean and digital muddle, I turn to Christoph Roser’s Industry 4.0 Discovery Bus Tour of Geeks. Christoph rented a bus and invited interested parties to join in a tour to try to figure out exactly what is all this noise about Industry 4.0. The Geeks visited 10 German factories that claim to be doing exemplary work, with Christoph blogging about the visits along the way. I encourage you to read the entire series of posts on his blog All About Lean.”

Source: Planet Lean

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

It’s wonderful to see LEI Chair John Shook recognize Christoph’s tour of Industry 4.0 as a highlight of 2019. The tour takes up half of his picture gallery. In his description, he got the essence right but a few details wrong. It wasn’t a “Bus Tour of Geeks” but a “Van Full of Nerds.”

It was a van because there were only 8 of us, and “nerds” at my insistence. Geeks are wannabee nerds and “nerds” was a more accurate description of Ralph Richter, Franck Vermet, Torbjørn Netland, Christoph Roser, Hironori Hibino, Kai Lorentzen, Mark Warren, and me.

We also visited 7 factories, not 10: Bosch (2 sites), ABB, Kärcher, Siemens, Trumpf, and Audi. In addition, we visited R&D labs, startups, and universities. Altogether, it was the most informative and densely packed tour I have ever been on or organized.

I agree with John Shook that Christoph’s posts about the tour are must-reads, as he covered every visit we made. I blogged about this trip in a complementary way, about tools and ideas that intrigued me rather than companies:

#lean, #lei, #planetlean, #allaboutlean, #johnshook, #industry40, #vanfullofnerds

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Nov 17 2019

The Inner Workings of Amazon Fulfillment Centers | Christoph Roser | AllAboutLean

“Recently I had the chance to visit two Amazon Fulfillment Centers to take an in-depth look at their inner workings. While many articles about Amazon go over the basics, I will give you a deep dive into the workings of their fulfillment centers. Due to the amount of information, I divided the content across a series of posts. ”

 

Sourced through AllAboutLean: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Michel Baudin‘s comments: Thanks to Christoph for posting this valuable information. At the end of Part 4, he announces more to come, about the software running the fulfillment centers. I look forward to it.

#logistics, #amazon, #robots, #materialshandling

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Jun 17 2019

Is TPS Both a Dessert Topping and a Floor Wax?

Darren Migita, MD

“TPS can be applied to any setting, as long as you can define your customer and product…” – Darren Migita MD– Seattle Children’s

Quoted by Jun Nakamuro on LinkedIn from a podcast.

 

 

Michel Baudin‘s comments: To be fair, Dr. Migita is a pediatrician with 20 years of experience. His podcast is about adapting TPS to health care, not to “any setting.” It is an interview, a format that can trip up anybody.

What I find remarkable throughout is that Migita does not hide behind the word “Lean.” He explicitly refers to Toyota and Taiichi Ohno and vigorously asserts that you can borrow ideas for car making to improve patient care.

This opening sentence in Jun Nakamuro’s quote, however, makes TPS sound like Shimmer, the product once advertised on Saturday Night Live as “both a dessert topping and a floor wax.” It almost kept me from listening further.

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