Nov 21 2011
An Alternative to Kanban: One-Piece Continuous Flow
Via Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
This is a guest post by Jim Coplien on Jeff Sutherland’s blog. Jim’s research seems thorough
Via scrum.jeffsutherland.com
Lean
Nov 20 2011
Russian award for manufacturing excellence named after A. K. Gastev
In any country, if you can present Lean as the continuation of the work of local pioneers, it is easier to implement than as a wholly alien concept. Lean’s debt to Ford, Taylor, Gilbreth, the TWI program, and others is acknowledged in Japan, which makes the connection easy to make in the US. In Russia, it was more of a challenge.
At OrgProm in 2008, Mikel Wader first told me about Gastev, who was by then so obscure that his books had not been reprinted in 40 years and it took months for OrgProm’s Julia Klimova to locate copies for me. A quick look at Gastev’s works then convinced me that he was indeed someone Russians could look up to as a precursor to Lean. Alexey Kapitonovitch Gastev (1882-1939) was the father of industrial engineering in Russia, creator of the Central Institute of Labor in Moscow in 1920, author of How Work Must be Done (Как надо работать) and Worker Training (Трудовые установки). Through an example, Figure 1 illustrates his thinking. His career was cut short when the government shot him as a “counter-revolutionary” in 1939.
Figure 1. Gastev’s sketch of multiple phases of improvement on a tube piercing operation
In 2008, OrgProm was already making efforts to naturalize Lean for Russia, for example by using the graphic style of soviet-era posters in illustrations of 5S. In the same spirit, I thought that establishing a “Gastev Prize” for manufacturing excellence would also make sense and suggested it. OrgProm followed up, and I was pleased this morning to receive the following notice from Omsk University’s Konstantin Novikov:
PROJECT OF THE YEAR: CUP, AK Gastev.Gasteva Cup – a public initiative, Interregional Public Movement “Lin-Forum. Professionals lean manufacturing. “It lies in the organization and conduct of national competition efficiency of production systems among the leading companies. Companies may be nominated for the award and the Cup as Gasteva program effectiveness and individual projects. Results evaluates expert group, consisting of the most respected and experienced expert consultants on operational efficiency and top managers of successful companies. The award ceremony will be held Gasteva Cup on November 15-18 at the VI Forum “Development of production systems” (up to 2011 – Russian Lin forum “Lean Russia”).
Nov 19 2011
Is it true that you get what you measure?
Via Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
The article Lean Manufacturing: Measuring To Get Results by Gerald Najarian lists a number of useful metrics. It also opens with the saying, or cliche, that “you get what you measure.”
The implications are (1) that people will always do whatever it takes to maximize their metrics, and (2) that, if you put the right metrics in place, improvement will take care of itself. While I agree that we need good metrics, we should not overestimate their impact. Peer pressure and personal ethics, among other factors, drive most people more than their performance metrics. And even when employees do their utmost to maximize their scores, they often do not have the necessary skills, and performance targets will have no effect unless backed up by some form of training, coaching and support.
Via ezinearticles.com
Nov 17 2011
Why people don’t learn Lean management
Nicolas Stampf, from BNP Paribas, posted the following question on LinkedIn: “How come that despite being showed and coached into doing continuous improvement the Lean way, people don’t learn. I mean that when you stop coaching them and come back some months later, although they’re doing performance management and problem solving, improvements are absent? When you re-show them, they say they forgot having done that previously.”
Following is my response:
- You might as well ask why people keep behaving in self-destructive ways when they know better, for example overeating and not exercising. The rewards of changing behavior are obvious and they know them, yet they don’t do it until a significant event happens. Getting seriously ill will do it, but so will running for president.
- In your question, you also treat the adoption of Lean as an personal choice. It’s not. Organizations choose to implement Lean, not individuals. It is a decision made by top managers, and they must communicate to all levels why they are doing it and that they are dead serious, which means that participation in the effort is a condition for continued membership in the organization.
- Also, as Tom Berghan put it “Lean isn’t Feng Shui on the business, it is the business.” In other words, if you want to be successful in implementing Lean, you cannot cherry-pick elements of it. Your question is centered on continuous improvement, performance management, and problem-solving, , which won’t make much of a difference if they are all you do. In manufacturing, the core of Lean includes specific approaches to production line design, operator job design, production control and logistics, quality assurance, maintenance, human resources, accounting, strategy deployment, etc. I understand your work in Banking, where many of these approaches are not directly relevant, which means that you have to invent their equivalent for banking operations.
Nov 14 2011
Last Call! Manufacturing Data Mining and
Last Call! Manufacturing Data Mining and Beyond 6σ: 2 Webinars on 11/15-16/11 http://ow.ly/7sIFi, #lean, #datamining, #sixsigma
Nov 24 2011
Sushi versus Raw Fish: Use foreign words only when you can’t help it
Via Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
James Hereford, COO of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, prefers to use the original Japanese terms when deploying Lean, arguing that it doesn’t really matter whether words are Japanese or English, and that many Lean terms have no exact translation. While it is true for Kaizen or Kanban, it is not for Gemba, which he gives as an example. Gemba just means “actual place,” nothing more. As a general term, in English, it is not very telling but, in context, it can be replaced with shop floor, lab, operating room, race track, or back office, and there are more urgent things to do to implement Lean than burdening your audience with new, unnecessary words. My main concern in the field is to communicate as effectively and as precisely as possible, and I have found it easier with words my audience already knows, used literally when possible, and metaphorically when not.
People choose words for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with conveying a meaning, such as the following:
Foreign words can serve all of these purposes, which I don’t pursue.
I still think foreign words are OK when:
Takt is German for musical bar or stroke, as in a four-stroke engine, and I have never seen a reasonable English equivalent to it in takt time. On the other hand, Kevin Hop and I struggled with the Japanese zentenatamadashi, which even Google knows nothing about. Literally, it means “all items sticking out their heads,” and Honda engineer Ray Sanders translated it as “Single-Piece Presentation.” We adopted it because it is accurate, descriptive, easy to remember, and no longer than the original.
Via fisher.osu.edu
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By Michel Baudin • Management, Press clippings • 14 • Tags: Lean, Lean manufacturing, Management