Mar 31 2012
Metrics in Lean – Part 1 – Requirements
Ever since childhood, we all want to know what grades we get on our report cards, and what these grades mean in terms of how well we are doing. We want to be evaluated based on parameters we understand and we can affect by our efforts.
A key issue in manufacturing is consistency as we go from a shop to a department to an entire plant and to the company as a whole. We don’t want to use parameters in terms of which excellent local performance can aggregate to poor global performance. Once performance measures are selected, the next challenge is to use them as a basis for management decisions that are in the best interest of the company while being fair and nonthreatening to employees. In particular, actions taken to improve one aspect of performance must not degrade another. In addition to these issues, in a lean environment, we need to consider the impact of improvement projects, before and after they are carried out.
Apr 7 2012
Metrics in Lean – Part 2 – Quality
My previous post on this subject listed some requirements on metrics to be useful on the shop floor. Here, we take it one level further, first by establishing that shop floor metrics should be in the language of things rather than the language of money, and then by using the requirements to evaluate examples of quality metrics. In later posts, I will do the same for other dimensions of manufacturing performance.
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By Michel Baudin • Metrics • 5 • Tags: KPI, Lean, Management, Metrics