April 2007 | Page 3 of 5

What Would You Do If You Had No __?

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2007

One my favorite phrases used by my Japanese teachers’ was “__ ga nakattara dosuru?” or “What would you do if you had no__?” When I heard this I knew we were in for some fun – of watching someone stretch their mind. R

TOC Bottleneck versus Lean Pacemaker – Part 1

By Ron - April 18th, 2007

Tonight I am starting a 2 part series contrasting the Theory of Constraints with Lean Manufacturing. Specifically, I want to discuss the differences between a TOC “bottleneck” and a Lean Manufacturing “pacemaker.” I have seen T

Who is Visiting the Blog?

By Ron - April 17th, 2007

I am stealing, I mean benchmarking, from my friend Mark Graban over at the Lean Blog. He has an interesting post on the side of his blog where his readers can leave comments sharing information such as who they are, where they work, et

The Best Visual Control in the World

By Jon Miller - April 17th, 2007

Day two of kaizen instruction on the shop floor, I came across the best visual control in the world. All of these years it’s been right in front of me. It’s the change in the human face known as the smile. The people that I

Taguchi Index – Cpm

By Ron - April 16th, 2007

Last night we discussed the Taguchi Loss Function and how Taguchi methods are more concerned with hitting the target compared to more traditional methods that often focus on keeping our data between the upper and lower specification li

A3 Report Title: PICK UP YOUR TOYS!!

By Jon Miller - April 16th, 2007

I need some parenting help. As the A3 report below will show, our young kids are slow at picking up their toys. The older one is old enough to slow down on purpose and play games with us, and the younger one is young enough or has the

A Real Invisibility Cloak – Mass Producers Dream!

By Ron - April 16th, 2007

Check out this article: A real invisibility cloak is in our grasp. If scientists figure this out think of all the tricks mass producers can do with their piles of inventory! They can hide them with their invisible cloak and then whip t

Taguchi Loss Function

By Ron - April 15th, 2007

Saying the words “Genichi Taguchi” to a hard core “western statistician” may get you some dirty looks. Actually, some of these crazy statisticians may want to strike you for saying this person’s name. Why the hate you may ask

Span – GE’s Variation Weapon

By Ron - April 12th, 2007

GE is arguably one of the best examples of Six Sigma excellence today. An often heard phrase is, “Motorola invented Six Sigma and GE perfected it.”A slick “variation weapon” GE has developed is called Span. I have never worked

Playing Fast – American Football and Lean

By Ron - April 11th, 2007

I am a big, OK fanatical, Ohio State University football (American football) fan. I grew up in Ohio and as my Mom says, “You can take the boy out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the boy.” I grew up watching Ohio State pla

Month: April 2007