February 2007 | Page 4 of 4

How to Calculate Standard Work in Process (SWIP) Quantity

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2007

Standard Work is one of the more misunderstood concepts in Lean manufacturing. It is neither standardization nor work standards. You can learn more about Standard Work by looking at the following blog posts: Reflections on Standard Wor

Lean Lexicon

By Ron - February 8th, 2007

I was fortunate enough to receive training from Gemba Research which was excellent and I highly recommend them, as I have stated before. But I would be doing the nice people over at Lean Enterprise Institute an injustice if I didn’t

Stop the Finger Pointing!

By Ron - February 7th, 2007

I despise, from the deepest pit of my being, the blame game that occurs within so many companies that manufacture products – any product. This problem is sadly amplified in western companies. It typically goes something like this, �

The Toyota Way is Doing Obvious Things

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2007

…but doing them exceptionally well. This was a comment from an economist on a TV news program in Japan I heard some while ago, that seems to have become common knowledge in Japanese business consciousness. This idea of the Toyota

Standard Work

By Ron - February 6th, 2007

Since the mission of this blog is to offer ideas for how to align the strengths of both Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma I wanted discuss a topic I firmly believe all continuous improvement practitioners should practice. This topic is

We Made Someone at Toyota Headquarters Unhappy

By Jon Miller - February 5th, 2007

We teach the Toyota system. We want to teach it to as many people as want to learn about it. As a consequence we think we provide Toyota with good PR. It seems not everyone at Toyota headquarters agrees. Here is an e-mail we received l

Electronic Kanban

By Ron - February 3rd, 2007

Here is a question for all the Lean gurus out there. Is “Electronic Kanban” an oxymoron? I have my own opinion but would like to hear yours.

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 3

By Jon Miller - February 1st, 2007

How do you motivate the people on the trailing edge of the bell curve? The so-called “anchor draggers” or CAVE people tend to attract the most attention or concern during the process of change. I wish we had time to bring e

Be SMART!

By Ron - February 1st, 2007

I am often asked why some projects fail to get results or even get completed. This is a difficult question with many possible answers. But if I were forced to narrow it done the ever famous “you must have a good champion” would be

Month: February 2007