Nov 24 2017

Now It’s Humans Assisting Robots | Sheelah Kolhatkar | The New Yorker

Steelcase ology

“[…]As a zone leader, Stinson is responsible for about fifteen employees on a section of the production line that makes parts for Steelcase’s Ology series—height-adjustable tables built for the standing-desk craze. Until last year, the plant workers had to consult a long list of steps, taking pains to remove the correct parts out of a cart filled with variously sized bolts and screws and pins and to insert each one in the correct hole and in the correct order. Now computerized workstations, called ‘vision tables,’ dictate, step by step, how workers are to assemble a piece of furniture. The process is virtually mistake-proof: the system won’t let the workers proceed if a step isn’t completed correctly. We stood behind a young woman wearing a polo shirt and Lycra shorts, with a long blond ponytail. When a step was completed, a light turned on above the next required part, accompanied by a beep-beep-whoosh sound. A scanner overhead tracked everything as it was happening, beaming the data it collected to unseen engineers with iPads.[…] ”

Sourced through The New Yorker

Michel Baudin‘s comments: This is excerpted from a long article entitled Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords, from the 10/23/2017 issue of The New Yorker that caught my attention because it’s not about robots and it seems to be in the same spirit as Omron’s Digital Yatai back in 2002: using technology to eliminate hesitation and to mistake-proof operations that are too long or have too many variants to allow operators to go “on automatic” while performing them.

When repeating the same 60 seconds of work 400 times in a shift, operators quickly develop the ability to execute rapidly and accurately with their minds elsewhere. If on the other hand, the takt time is 20 minutes or the work is customized for every unit, the work requires the operators’ undivided, conscious attention and their productivity is increased by systems like the vision tables described in the article, that prompt them for every step and validate its completion.

Continue reading…

By • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Nov 22 2017

Why do we call it “value stream”?

On LinkedIn, Dinesh Vasandani, Director of industrial engineering and manufacturing operational excellence at Boeing, asked “Why do we call it value stream? Most value streams have minimal value added work rates. Should we start calling them waste streams?”

To date, Dinesh has had responses from, besides myself, the following: Humaid Abubakar, Ray Ardahji, Andrew Brown, Mauro Cardenas, Evaristo Dominguez, Prakash Gadhar, Jacqueline Hartke, Jun Nakamuro, Salvador D. Sanchez, Mark Searcy, Oliver Tamis, Ravi Vaidiswaran, Matt Wehr.

Toyota alumnus Salvador Sanchez was first to point out that Toyota doesn’t use the term “value streams,” which was echoed by other past and present Toyota employees, like Evaristo Dominguez and Ray Ardahji.

Continue reading…

By • 3 • Tags: , , , ,

Nov 12 2017

How Hard Is It To Create Flow?

Mark DeLuzio

Mark DeLuzio started a discussion on LinkedIn with the following question:

“My Sensei Mr. Nakao once told me: ‘The hardest thing to do in TPS is to create flow.’ What do you think about that?”

It started a spirited debate, with the following participants, in alphabetical order: Bruce Andersen, Rob Beesley , Vincent Bozzone, Mark DeLuzio, Michael Dunne, Okan Gurbuz, Shahrukh Irani, Kerry McPherson,, Gregoire Nleme, Okan Gurbuz, Egidijus Karitonis, Sunil Malagi, Paul Van Metre, Jerry O’Dwyer, John Peck, Luis Saenz, Ravi Vaidiswaran, Prasad Velaga, Raka Rao, Sandur Subramanyam, Mark Warren

Sourced through LinkedIn

 The following is a digest of my own answers, collated before they vanish in the replies-of-replies bowels of LinkedIn.

Continue reading…

By • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Nov 7 2017

More Sophisticated Graphics In Today’s New York Times

Mass shootings versus number of guns by country
Mass shootings versus guns per capita by country

“When the world looks at the United States, it sees a land of exceptions […] But why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?[…] Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad. These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion. The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.”

The source for both charts is Adam Lankford from the University of Alabama. The charts Include countries with more than 10 million people and at least one mass public shooting with four or more victims.

Sourced from The New York Times

Michel Baudin‘s comments: Six months ago, I was bemoaning the absence of scatterplots in business analytics and more recently complimenting the New York Times for the sophistication of its graphics. Manufacturing professionals should not be shy about using scatterplots, as they have learned to do in Middle School. Here, they are used to highlight outliers, which isn’t the most common application. What this article — and these charts — show is how the tool can be used not just to solve technical problems but to inform a political debate as well.-

By • 0 • Tags:

Oct 28 2017

Objections To The History Of Quality As Told On The ASQ Website

5 years ago, I pointed out several omissions in the ASQ’s History of Quality pages, which have not been corrected. Specifically, I faulted them for ignoring the TPS/Lean approach to quality, the role of interchangeable parts technology, and the Roman philosopher Cicero, who coined the word “quality.” The first page, however, also contains what I think is an error of commission, where it credits the guilds of medieval Europe as precursors in the field, as follows:

“From the end of the 13th century to the early 19th century, craftsmen across medieval Europe were organized into unions called guilds. These guilds were responsible for developing strict rules for product and service quality. Inspection committees enforced the rules by marking flawless goods with a special mark or symbol.[…] Inspection marks and master-craftsmen marks served as proof of quality for customers throughout medieval Europe. This approach to manufacturing quality was dominant until the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.”

Continue reading…

By • 1 • Tags: , , , ,

Oct 27 2017

Jidoka At GE And Amazon | Marc Onetto | Planet Lean

“[…]The principle of Jidoka applies everywhere, especially if we come down to its fundamental intent: preventing bad quality from going down the line and impacting the customer, understanding the causes of a problem as it happens, and giving the employee the authority (and autonomy) to stop the line when an issue occurs.”

Sourced Planet Lean

Michel Baudin‘s comments: The experience of an executive like Marc Onetto is always a good read. What he recounts, however, has everything to do with the TPS approach to quality and nothing to do with Jidoka. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate its value. I have seen plants where assembly work is continued on units known to be defective, with a repair area to fix them at the end. I have heard managers justify this practice with the mistaken assumption that it allowed them to ship faster and I have seen the improvements that result from stopping it, in line with what Onetto describes.

But we shouldn’t forget that Jidoka is not about employee empowerment but about automation. Regardless of whether it’s translated as “automation with a human touch” or “autonomation,” it’s still a form of automation. Onetto recounts being made to watch Sakichi Toyoda’s Type G loom stopping when threads broke but that’s not all it did. It also had automatic shuttle change, which solved the problem of what to do when shuttles run out of yarn that had bedeviled loom engineers for decades.

See Jidoka isn’t just about “stop and fix”, Jidoka versus automation, or check out Working with Machines

See on <Scoop it link>

By • 3 • Tags: , , , , ,

«‹ 26 27 28 29›»