Blog clippings

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.

Continue reading…

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Feb 27 2019

Analysis of Oscar TV Viewership | Mark Graban | LinkedIn

“Initial analysis says Oscars TV viewers and ratings are up over 2018. But, for context, the ratings were DOWN in 2018 compared to 2017.

Instead of reacting to each new data point, look at trends over time using “run charts” or “process behavior charts” (as I created). Did having “no host” make any statistically significant difference in ratings? No. The numbers are just fluctuating. Don’t waste time cooking up an explanation for ‘noise’ in a metric.”

Mark Graban’s Oscar Viewership Chart

 

 

Source: LinkedIn

Michel Baudin‘s comments: What happened between 2004 and 2005? Visually, the downward step is the one feature of the chart that stands out. If the technique Mark used is valid, there should be assignable causes from that period to explain the drop. If you forget the green and red lines and just look at the time series, however, a smooth, long-term downward trend sounds like a better fit. Perhaps Mark should try more modern trend analysis tools besides the venerable XmR chart.

Following a day of spirited discussion, Mark sent me the data and asked for my own analysis, which is in the chart below. The gray band is a 99% confidence interval, calculated without any knowledge of the nature of the numbers. The points outside the band can be assumed to have assignable causes for their unusual high or low ratings, and I took a look at the press reports on a few. As you can see, there is nothing special happening in 2004-2005. 

The popularity of a show has nothing to do with a critical dimension on a manufactured part, which is supposed to be constant. The plant organization has the authority to do what it takes to keep it that way. There is no reason why show ratings should be constant.

In addition, while a length measurement qualifies as a raw data point, the published number of viewers of a TV show doesn’t. In the US, it is an estimate based on a poll of 5,000 households. Viewership of the Oscars ceremony in 2019 was 11.5% higher than in 2018. On 5,000 data points, it does not look like a fluctuation. By comparison, political polls use samples of 1,000 to 1,500 voters and claim margins of error of ±3%.

The viewership estimates aren’t just numbers in a table, and you can’t interpret them properly without knowing their backstory.

#SPC, #XmRChart, #ProcessBehaviorChart

Continue reading…

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Dec 12 2018

Open workspaces and collaboration | E. S. Bernstein and S. Turban | Royal Society

Data capture device

“[…]In two intervention-based field studies of corporate headquarters transitioning to more open office spaces, we empirically examined—using digital data from advanced wearable devices and from electronic communication servers—the effect of open office architectures on employees’ face-to-face, email and instant messaging (IM) interaction patterns. Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.[…]”

Michel Baudin‘s comments: I got curious after reading multiple blanket statements on LinkedIn to the effect that open workspaces decrease office productivity. The authors all refer to the same “Harvard study” without giving any details.  Is the Harvard label sufficient to quell any doubts? As the notorious Reinhart-Rogoff paper on austerity shows, it is nothing of the kind. 

On closer scrutiny, the Bernstein-Turban’s study is serious but limited in scope. The readers of readers of readers of their paper draw increasingly cosmic conclusions that the study does not support. To locate it, you must thread your way through multiple layers of papers. Each one simplifies and amplifies the results of the previous ones. In the process, they forget any of the nuances and restrictions of the original authors. 

Continue reading…

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