Oct 25 2013

Top misconceptions of the Lean movement, according to Jim Womack | Financial Post

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Misconception 1: ‘Lean is a cost-cutting exercise.’

Misconception 2: ‘It is about factories.’

Misconception 3: ‘Lean is a within-the-walls activity to fix your company.’

Misconception 4: ‘Lean is an improvement process production people can do — management doesn’t have to do anything.'”

 

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

I agree with points 1 and 4, but I have issues with 2 and 3. “The Machine that Changed the World” was a book about factories, and it was based on a worldwide benchmarking study of the car industry sponsored by the Sloan foundation.

Mission accomplishedLean is proven in Manufacturing, by the success of Toyota and a  few other manufacturing companies. That Lean is applicable outside of Manufacturing is possible, and plausible, but not proven. Even in Manufacturing, it is far too early to proclaim “mission accomplished,” as most attempted implementations in factories have yet to deliver the expected results.

As for expanding beyond the walls of your company into the supply chain, yes, you should do it but not before you have your own house in order. Toyota itself didn’t do it until the late 1970s.

Going to suppliers before you have  transformed your internal operations is not a recipe for success. Womack does not claim it is, but branding a focus on internal operations a “misconception” is an encouragement for managers to shift their focus to suppliers too early.

See on business.financialpost.com

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Oct 24 2013

Toyota Lagging in Part Standardisation and Platform Sharing | Autocar

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Kanban-style just-in time parts deliveries, kaizen policies of continuous improvement – Toyota has been a banner-carrier for these and many other methodologies that long ago gave it an edge when it comes to productivity and robust, repeatable quality.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to hear, as we did last week in Toyota’s Nagoya headquarters, that the company has been a bit less effective when it comes to parts standardisation, platform sharing and common parts strategies.”

 

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

I was taken aback by the article’s original title, describing Toyota as a “master of mass production,” but read on nonetheless and found the rest intriguing.

In essence, it asserts that Toyota paid for the autonomy of its product development teams in the form of too many different parts and platforms, and is undertaking to change this for the future.

The article does not say how Toyota proposes to do it.

See on www.autocar.co.uk

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Oct 22 2013

Employees are Colleagues, Not Assets | Eric Bigelow | IndustryWeek

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

“A lot of organizations claim that employees are their greatest assets. To many this seems like a very profound way to view the employees. I disagree. I think that this terminology can be very harmful to organizational culture.

The word asset means ‘anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value.'”

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

This is a point I have grown tired of making in vain. Assets are things you own and, unless they are slaves, you don’t own the people who work for you. Saying “People are our greatest assets,” is not only inaccurate and distasteful, it also suggests that you want to have as many assets as you can.

In private life, it may be true: the more you own, presumably, the better off you are. Business, however,  is different: you want to generate income with as few assets as you can get away with. That’s why you monitor ratios like “Return on Assets.”

Assets and liabilities are mistakenly viewed as positives and negatives. They are in fact technical terms from accounting to designate respectively what you own and what you  owe. Whether you like it or not, you own excess inventory, and it is an asset you would rather not have. A 0% long-term loan, on the other hand, is a liability you are happy to have.

In and of themselves,  employees are neither assets nor liabilities. On the balance sheet, what the company owes them in benefits appears in the Liabilities column. So does the shareholders’ equity. There should be no value judgement attached to terms like Asset or Liability.

See on www.industryweek.com

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Oct 21 2013

Bombardier receives award from the AME | ept

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“Recognizing organizations that are implementing lean manufacturing and management processes is one of the highlights of our conference,” says Paul Kuchuris, AME […]

When evaluating Bombardier’s Toronto site, the AME assessment team was impressed by the use of improvement tools, especially with regards to the organization’s approach to Standardized Problem Solving and an empowerment system called Xcell. Combined, these processes drive continuous improvement and engagement by the workforce down to the shop-floor level. Equally impressive to the team was the level of accountability at Bombardier’s Toronto Site and an understanding that the entire organization must change to meet evolving demands and new visions.”

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

According to this article, the AME recognized Bombardier as having implemented Lean Manufacturing on the basis of having Standardized Problem Solving and an individual suggestion system called Xcell.

Is that it? I have to assume that Bombardier has done a few other things to improve quality, productivity, delivery, safety, and morale, including perhaps designing production lines for flow, reducing setup times, implementing a pull system with heijunka, mistake-proofing manual operations, setting up work teams with job rotations, …

What did they actually do and how well did it work? The article does not say.

See on www.ept.ca

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Oct 19 2013

A New Approach to Materials Handling in Warehouses

In a discussion in the TPS + 1 SENSEI group on LinkedIn, Casey Ng drew my attention to a materials handling approach from Kiva Systems, a company started up in Boston in 2003 by engineer/MBA Mick Mountz with funding from Bain Capital, that is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. The following is a promotional video from Youtube:

The system shown in the video is clever, and can certainly be useful in fulfilling Amazon orders or in kit picking for assembly, but it is also obviously not a panacea. It only supports a single-level of racks, and boxes or bins that can be lifted by people. If you wanted to use the overhead space for storage, you might combine it with a classical automatic storage and retrieval system, which would move the portable racks to and from from upper levels for further handling on the ground by the Kiva pods.

Bringing materials to an operator at a fixed location rather than have the operator travel to do the picking is what is also attempted by carousels, but carousels require the operator to wait up to a half-turn for the right slot to be presented, and are limited in the number of items they can carry.

Cheesecake-factory-device-in-Kiva-warehouse with highlightAs shown in the video, while the concept is innovative in terms of storage and retrieval, it does not stretch hardware technology.  As we see on the video, we see the operator who loads boxes onto racks for putaway use devices that look like the ones used in restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory or the Fish Market to notify waiting customers that their tables are ready. The pods look like giant Roombas, but move in a more restricted manner. According to Mick Mountz, the pods just move around the grid of small squares marked on the floor with optical guidance and a simple form of “after-you” system to avoid collisions. On the video, auto-ID seems to be based on plain old barcodes. There is no mention of RFID or even QR-codes. The actual transfer of boxes is manual, with a form of pick-to-light guidance. While less visible, the software that coordinates all the moving parts is clearly at the core of this system.

I learned of Kiva’s existence this morning, and have no relationship with this company.

 

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