Feb 7 2015
One-piece Flow for Information Products?
Organizations that produce documents — whether they are publications for sale, standard tests for schools, legal templates, or work instructions for production — face challenges that differ from manufacturing, because data and materials don’t flow the same way. The production of a document by a team is a process of collaborative editing, not a fixed sequence of standardized operations.
With electronic documents, you need a revision management system to prevent inconsistent updates, you need to cap the number of documents in process to control lead time, and you may need to improve the work flow or increase the team size if saturated.
Tools like 5S are irrelevant in this context, because the work takes place inside a computer network, not in the physical office, and setting up an effective network — with the right software properly configured — requires information systems professionals at the state of the art. What looks like rework in this context is a collaborative editing process that must be managed, not eliminated.
Feb 10 2015
How to Do a Gemba Walk | Michael Bremer | Slideshare
Source: www.slideshare.net
No disagreement with what Michael Bremer is saying, but I would emphasize observation skills more.
One exercise Kei Abe came up with is the bug hunt. You take a team of managers to the floor and give each one 20 red tags. They they have 20 minutes to attach the tags to such “bugs” as frayed cables, devices held with duct tape, puddles of lubricant, misplaced items, etc. They usually have no trouble using all 20 tags.
I also ask people to be like the Count in Sesame Street and count people walking, machines not working, etc. These activities have a data collection and validation value in their own right, but they also focus the eyes of participants and make them notice details they would otherwise miss.
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
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By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings • 1 • Tags: Gemba Walk, Lean, Lean manufacturing