Lean Manufacturing Archives | Page 15 of 24

Lean Leadership Lessons from Lantech (video)

By Jon Miller - March 30th, 2011

Our friend Paul Akers from FastCap recently visited Lantech, a leading lean manufacturer of wrapping and packaging machines. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Lantech has become a benchmark company that often invites visitors to share in

Insights from McKinsey Interview with Bombardier CEO Pierre Beaudoin

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2011

An interview in this month’s McKinsey Quarterly with Bombardier CEO Pierre Beaudoin shares the lessons learned during the transformation across the past decade. Titled “Flying people, not planes” the article explains

Lean Consulting, Packaging and the Slow Path to Success

By Jon Miller - February 13th, 2011

I eat out too often. This is the factor of the amount of work-related travel and the difficulty of preparing my own food in a time and materials-efficient manner while on the road. This is one of the reasons why too many lean consultan

Intel Volunteers Apply Lean Principles to Food Bank

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2011

My friend Kevin Meyer of Superfactory shared a great example of lean principles being applied beyond manufacturing to help a non-profit organization become more productive in serving the needs of the community. Roadrunner Food Bank put

Making Things is Not About Making Things

By Jon Miller - December 14th, 2010

What is the purpose of a factory? The obvious answer is that a factory is there for the purpose of making things. We can further inquire into the purpose of making things and come up with various answers that basically boil down to

Three Types of Standardized Work

By Jon Miller - November 22nd, 2010

One of our readers Harish asked: Recently I have come across different types of standardized work in two or three places during my research. They are Type 1, 2 and 3. Can you please throw some light on this? While the concept was not n

10 Mistakes in Starting Lean Enterprise Transformations

By Jon Miller - October 11th, 2010

The are plenty of mistakes people can make when starting up a lean enterprise transformation. Interestingly, many of these mistakes are similar if not identical to those entrepreneurs make in starting a business. Perhaps these mistakes

The Engine, the Oil and the Fuel

By Jon Miller - October 6th, 2010

A lean facilitator from France asked a question about how lean transformations should be driven. This person’s company started lean in 2007 by having a sensei within top management. The background is: I was named lean facilitator

Cross Training, the Johari Window and Kaizen

By Jon Miller - September 27th, 2010

Within a lean work system the practice of job rotation serves the purpose of cross training and increased flexibility. This can be deliberate and time-based for repetitive manual work, such that people switch from one task to another e

How to Sustain a Lean Culture after 10 Years

By Jon Miller - September 15th, 2010

This week I am in Japan helping to lead one of our lean manufacturing benchmarking trips. What I took away from the debriefing from yesterday’s lean benchmarking visit was a series of lessons on how to sustain a lean culture afte

Still Learning the Meaning of Cleaning

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2010

Just when you thought you knew all you needed to know about cleaning the workplace as part of lean manufacturing, the universe sends you a day like yesterday. We visited a small, privately held company in rural Japan. This company was

Lean Manufacturing and the Brain

By Jon Miller - September 11th, 2010

This week I learned that within the three pounds of spongy flesh that is the human brain there are 1.1 trillion cells, 100 billion neurons and 10 x 10 to the millionth power of possible neuron connections. This number makes my brain hu

How to Design a Lean Operation at a One Day Takt

By Jon Miller - August 23rd, 2010

Steve C asked: I have just moved from a role where the takt was 55 seconds into a new role where the customer requirement is one part every day. Does anyone have experience running to this kind of timescale? This is a fairly common cha

What’s Next for Lean?

By Jon Miller - August 21st, 2010

Whether I am speaking about lean to an audience of one or one hundred if the conversation goes on long enough the question inevitably arises; what’s next for lean? I always manage an answer, typically tying it to the theme of the

The Pros and Cons of Paced Conveyor Lines

By Jon Miller - August 16th, 2010

Steve asked in an e-mail: What are the productivity advantages, specifically in terms of operator efficiency, with respect to a moving, paced conveyor line and a non-moving, non-paced line? We’re looking at three scenarios: 1) No

The Purpose of Lean

By Jon Miller - July 31st, 2010

I think the purpose of lean is to get better at choosing good over evil. Most of us understand that lean requires us to choose value over waste, good over bad, and better over good. But to what end? How do we judge what is value and wh

The Importance of the Storefront in Lean Manufacturing

By Jon Miller - July 25th, 2010

A little while ago P Cunningham asked: “What is a storefront and how can it help my lean manufacturing system be more flexible?” I haven’t found a reference to a “storefront” as such in any lean sources. S

21 Questions to Ask When Walking the Model Line, Part 2

By Jon Miller - June 9th, 2010

Continuing our walk on the model line, here are questions 11 through 21 to ask when performing a lean maturity audit: 11. What methods are used to smooth out the variation in workload due to changes in product mix or work volume? What

21 Questions to Ask When Walking the Model Line, Part 1

By Jon Miller - June 8th, 2010

The model line is a value stream or a section of a value stream used as a pilot to demonstrate an organization’s capability to deploy lean systems and behaviors. The model line approach is used early in an organizations lean jour

Enhancing Total Management Commitment

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2010

In an e-mail, Junaid asked: How we will enhance top management commitment and involvement for implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)? This is a great general question to ask for any effort to establish excellence, maintai

Fake Lean and the Spotting Thereof

By Jon Miller - May 31st, 2010

If the peddlers of fake lean were as easy to spot as antler salesmen we would have a much easier time staying free of them. I’ve seen some great deals on antlers, and like the emperor’s clothes, the many leaders who have pa

The Fine Print About Lean Transformations

By Jon Miller - May 27th, 2010

Here’s the deal. If you call between now and July 1, 2012 we will guarantee a full 5X return on investment for a lean transformation! Benefit now and pay in 24 easy monthly installments. No capital investment is required. Ready t

What to Do When Your Lean Implementation is Like a Chicken

By Jon Miller - April 25th, 2010

Premanath asked: What is skill matrix and before starting skill matrix what should be known? Nice two-part question. The first part is relatively easy and has little to do with chickens. The skill matrix is a document that displays the

National Public Radio to Feature Lean Thinking and NUMMI

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2010

This Saturday March 27, 2010 the NPR program This American Life will feature the story of the Toyota-GM join venture factory in California in an episode titled NUMMI. Here is a promotional blurb from the NPR website. The story of a car

Run is to Milk as Spider is to…

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2010

A pair of questions about lean logistics over the past few weeks prompted this post. Santosh from India asked “what is the milk run method?” The Milk Run The milk run is an example of time-fixed, quantity variable replenish

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