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

By • Management • 1 • Tags: , ,

Oct 21 2013

Bombardier receives award from the AME | ept

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“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.

 

By • Technology • 3 • Tags: , , , , ,

Oct 18 2013

China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing Dies | PTC | Mark McKay

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Global manufacturing is in transition. The advantage of Chinese manufacturers is slipping, and every day brings more news of another American manufacturer gaining (or recovering) a little piece of …
See on blogs.ptc.com

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Oct 18 2013

When Bad Things Happen to Good Supply Chains | Industry Week

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“Any single failure anywhere in the supply chain can bring operations and profits to a standstill. From the 2011 tragedies of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan to last year’s devastating Hurricane Sandy closer to home, Mother Nature has a way of reminding us to reexamine catastrophe preparedness.

These events, and the tragic aftermath that follows, also serve to remind the insurance industry of the challenges in quantifying risk and accounting for exposure in an increasingly complex supply chain environment. As a result, risk managers are being asked new questions as insurance underwriters require them to seek information from a broader range of stakeholders within and outside of their organizations.”

 

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

The article is limited to a list of questions an insurer might ask about a supply chain, some of which cannot be pratically answered. The supply chain management literature often states the need to know your suppliers’ suppliers and your customers’ customers, but most companies don’t, and practically can’t.

After all, the point of buying from suppliers is to delegate responsibility for the whole upstream supply chain. If you have to worry about it all the way to mining raw materials out of the ground, you might as well make it all in-house from scratch, like at Ford’s River Rouge plant in the 1930s.

Asking the right questions is fine, but providing answers is better. Supply chain disruptions come in many degrees of severity and a variety of frequencies, from trucks delayed by traffic accidents to earthquakes and tsunamis.

You can, and should have preplanned responses to small, frequent disruptions. That may involve building some slack in milk run schedules, keeping small buffers of stocks, or having contingency plans for alternative transportation…

But you cannot practically have preplanned responses to all possible catastrophes. What you need is to monitor operations with vigilance to get early warnings, and develop relationships with your suppliers and customers that are strong enough that they come together and develop an ad-hoc, rapid response when disaster strikes.

This is the lesson I see in Toyota’s response to emergencies, from the Mississippi flood of 1993 to the Aisin Seiki fire of 1997 and the Fukushima earthquake of 2011.

See on www.industryweek.com

By • Press clippings • 3 • Tags: , , ,

Lean Logistics Seminar Announcement

Oct 16 2013

Lean Logistics Seminars in Spain

Following is a translation of the report posted on Asenta’s website on the joint seminars we conducted in Barcelona, Madrid, and Bilao last week:

Lean Logistics – World Class Practices Series 2013

On October 7, 8 and 10, we held the fourth session of our World Class Series 2013 Lean Cycle in three cities, with more than 100 executives in attendance.

We provided an overview of the meaning and scope of the Lean Logistics as a strategy for competitiveness, together with  case studies, to show the solutions used on specific problems and thus show the benefits of  highly effective management

Among the speakers was Michel Baudin, a recognized expert in operations management and a strategic partner of ASENTA. Since 1987 has been advising companies on Lean implementation across many industries in America, Asia and Europe. He has published four books on various aspects of operational excellence.

Also participating were Luis Mauleon, Managing Partner at ASENTA, who specializes in transformation processes in organizations, and Juan Ortega, Management Consultant and coordinator of Lean Logistics at ASENTA.

These seminars were for CEOs, and Directors of Manufacturing, Operations, and Logistics, and, more  generally, for leaders committed to improving their organizations’ supply chains.

Following are a few shots of the seminars in Barcelona and Bilbao:

 

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