Sep 10 2016
Is Leader Standard Work A Thing?
It is a recurring expression in forums, conferences, and papers about Lean Leadership, but unclear because of the ambiguity about both leaders and standard work.
Sep 2 2016
Why I don’t like Lean houses, except one | Christian Hohmann | LinkedIn Pulse
“I never liked the (Toyota inspired) Lean houses and their many variants. First all these models are generally understood as prescriptive rather than descriptive, thus those new to Lean tend to adopt and copy one model without necessarily understanding its real meaning. The building blocks of Lean houses are principles, methods and tools, reinforcing the feeling that it’s all about “techniques”.
The house building metaphor also suggests a beginning with sound foundations, robust pillars and when the roof is atop, the organization is done. We’ll see later it is not in this way. To add to the confusion, with the broad choice of variants, which is the right one to look at?”
Sourced through LinkedIn Pulse
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
I share your reservations about the many “Houses of Lean” floating around, but my main concern with them is vagueness. The descriptive versus prescriptive confusion that you bring up is one concern. In one diagram I am looking at right now, “Heijunka” sits on top of “Stability” and underneath “Pull System,” “Takt Time” and “Continuous Flow.” Whatever it is intended to mean, it can’t be that you should implement Heijunka as soon as your processes are stable. Given that there are very few companies outside of the Toyota supply chain that have even implemented Heijunka, it is clearly an advanced topic, not to be tackled until you have done many other things, including items listed above it.
The basic operation when drawing a house of Lean is stacking. It has a well-defined meaning in computer networks, where you talk about “protocol stacks.” For example, the worldwide web sits on top of the internet, and it means that, behind the web face it shows you, your browser uses the internet protocol to communicate with the world, in ways that would be unintelligible to you. The meaning is obviously different in a “House of Lean,” but what is it? And what does it mean to draw a manager inside?
Aug 31 2016
Teaching Adults: The Example Of New Plant Design
I have recently been involved in discussions of methods to teach adult learners and the ways if differs from teaching children or young adults. My personal experience is exclusively with adult professionals in a continuing education mode, and I provided examples from my recently most successful course, on New Plant Design, developed in 2005 at the request of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, and given more than 15 times in China since, and twice in Russia, although never in the US or Western Europe.
Aug 15 2016
Industry 4.0 – Revolution or Evolution | Bodo Wiegand | Wiegand’s Watch
Bodo Wiegand heads Germany’s Lean Management Institute. In his latest newsletter, on Wiegand’s Watch, he explains how he feels manufacturers should respond to the German government’s Industry 4.0 initiative.
Aug 9 2016
The Routledge Companion to Lean Management | Torbjorn Netland
The Routledge Companion to Lean Management is now available for pre-ordering. It is a compilation of contributions from multiple authors, edited by Torbjorn Netland, and Chapter 8 is my overview of Lean Logistics. The other co-authors include Dan Jones, Jim Womack, John Shook, Jeffrey Liker, Robert Hafey, John Bicheno, Glenn Ballard, Michael Ballé, Mary Poppendieck, and many others whose work I am not familiar with.
Sep 10 2016
How to Pick the Fastest Line at the Supermarket | New York Times [Debunk]
“[…] Choose a single line that leads to several cashiers
Not all lines are structured this way, but research has largely shown that this approach, known as a serpentine line, is the fastest. The person at the head of the line goes to the first available window in a system often seen at airports or banks. […]”
Sourced through the New York Times
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
No! Research shows no such thing. The serpentine line does not reduce the customers’ mean time through the system. Little’s Law tells us that, in steady state, regardless of how the queue is organized:
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By Michel Baudin • Laws of nature 4 • Tags: Little's Law, Queueing, Serpentine Queue