February 2007 | Page 3 of 4

Not Enough “Toyota Way” in Factory Air?

By Jon Miller - February 16th, 2007

There’s a good article over at the New York Times on February 15, 2007 titled The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers. It’s not about putting Jeffrey Liker’s book The Toyota

Two Bin Kanban

By Ron - February 15th, 2007

A two bin kanban is one of the most popular kanban systems due to its simplicity. The basic idea is an operator will get the material they need from one of the bins while the other bin is being refilled. When things are working properl

Toyota Rebrands in Canada

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2007

Toyota Canada’s new guiding principle, slogan and value statement, to put it in marketing speak, is ‘make things better’. Toyota Canada gave itself a giant pat on the back in explaining the results of their extensive

Standard Work Needed for Use of Windows

By Jon Miller - February 14th, 2007

In chapter 32 of Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, Ohno said, “There is a correct sequence to kaizen.” We must first study and improve the work itself (manual work) then improve the process (sequence, steps) and th

Excellent Six Sigma Resource

By Ron - February 13th, 2007

If you are involved with Six Sigma, statistics, quality control, or anything remotely similar I highly recommend you check out Keith Bower’s website. I came across this website a year or so ago and have learned so much. His podcast�

Rarely Has Ranting Been This Good

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2007

Blogger BDG123 at Rantings on Markets, Economics and Business Strategy is an electrical engineer and mathematician by training, one-time corporate consultant and corporate sales and marketing executive in the information technology and

Why Some Lean Six Sigma Programs Fail – Part 2

By Ron - February 12th, 2007

In part 1 of “Why Lean Sigma Programs Fail” I discussed “activity centered programs.” Now I will introduce the alternative to ACP’s – results driven programs. Very simply stated RDP’s, as I will call them, aim for measura

Building a Lean Video Library

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2007

Our clients often ask us to help them with building a Lean video library. They want us to recommend 5 or 10 videos on Lean manufacturing that will help their people learn first the general concepts, then the more in-depth tools and sys

Why Some Lean Six Sigma Programs Fail – Part 1

By Ron - February 11th, 2007

If you have not read the Harvard Business Review on Change I highly recommend it. It is a series of case studies focused on change management. One of the case studies is called, “Successful Change Programs Begin with Results” by Ro

Waiting

By Ron - February 10th, 2007

If you pick up any book about Lean or attend a Lean training course you will likely hear how overproduction is the mother of all wastes. OK, in the truest sense it probably is… especially for those that manufacture any type of produc

Month: February 2007