Lean Archives | Page 62 of 68

Real Life SMED

By Ron Pereira - September 15th, 2008

One of the best ways I’ve found to explain various lean and six sigma topics to others is to use examples from real life. After all, not everyone makes cars or the mirrors that go on cars… so many of the examples we read about in t

Are You Ready For Lean?

By Ron Pereira - September 8th, 2008

I just skimmed through a short white paper that attempted to provide a checklist to help an organization decide if they were ready for lean. It was written by a person who works for a “human capital management solutions” company. Y

Step Away From the Dashboard!

By Ron Pereira - September 2nd, 2008

Here’s a question for you. Is the mission control center of your organization centered on a set of dashboards or balanced scorecards? In other words, when a crisis is about to hit (or has already hit) how do you react? Do you run to

Womack’s Lean versus Ohno’s TPS

By Ron Pereira - September 1st, 2008

Harish, a reader of LSS Academy, recently sent the following question via email. Dear Mr. Pereira, I have been reading your insightful posts on TPS. I also came across your post on VSM. I have a quick question, of all the books I have

Rat Racing and Lean Thinking

By Ron Pereira - August 20th, 2008

The recent post about my credit card issues has created quite a conversation. One of the main themes being commented on is whether or not we, in America where we don’t have the chip like they do in the UK, should have to show an ID w

Do you Use VSM Software?

By Ron Pereira - August 13th, 2008

There are at least two schools of thought related to the use of software when drawing value stream maps. Some lean purists claim the use of value stream mapping software is heretical while others have no problem with it. My Opinion My

Must Read Article about Top Toyota Engineer

By Ron Pereira - August 5th, 2008

If you don’t already read Jon Miller’s excellent blog you’ll want to pay a visit and read his most recent article “Toyota’s Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People.” The original article Jon r

Laundry Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - August 2nd, 2008

With my wife trying to focus on our newest family member I decided to do the laundry this past week. It’s been awhile since I’ve done the laundry and some things have definitely changed. Before Kaizen Before, what I’m calling

Planting Seeds

By Ron Pereira - July 13th, 2008

What can we learn about continuous improvement from the person Christian’s call the King of King’s, Lord of Lord’s, and The Great I AM? Lots. Let’s start in the book of Matthew. And he spoke to them at length in parable

Ban the Stop Watch!

By Ron Pereira - June 30th, 2008

Allow me to introduce Joe, the plant Industrial Engineer. Joe is a nice boy fresh out of college. On this particular day old Joe comes popping out of his cubicle in his Dockers and white polo shirt holding a clip board and stop watch.

The Spiritual Side of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2008

I’m exhausted – both physically and mentally. For the past 5 days I’ve been involved in an extremely intense kaizen. One could even call it a kaikaku – or radical change event. I’ve coached, learned, cleaned, painted, and swe

What is Value?

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2008

“Above all, lean practitioners must be relentlessly focused on the customer when specifying and creating value.” -Womack & Jones, Lean Thinking I love Seth Godin’s blog. He has written some amazing posts over the year

Strategies to Sustain Operations Excellence

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2008

This is an abridged version of a presentation I recently gave at a manufacturing excellence conference. If you’d like to download the video follow this link to Google Video and click on download video.

Entropy, Salmon, and Swimming

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2008

A can of soup falls if you drop it, your car tire blows out when a nail punctures it, and eventually my barbeque grill cools down after grilling steaks, even in the hot Texas air. Why is this? Allow me to explain. While these things ar

Eight Reasons Your Lean/Six Sigma Initiative Could Fail

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2008

Launching a Lean or Six Sigma initiative signals a move towards operational excellence and a dedication to continuous improvement. Yet, navigating this journey successfully requires awareness of certain critical challenges that are oft

Conference Calls, Kids, and SMED

By Ron Pereira - May 30th, 2008

My wife is out of town to visit some relatives which means it’s me and my three kiddos for the weekend. Here is the sticky part. I had to arrange an important conference call today and was totally stressing out on how I was going to

Definitely Not the Pull System: Anderson Cooper 360

By Jon Miller - May 26th, 2008

Not exactly breaking news, but highly amusing: video link How many wastes can you spot in this video? What are the causes of these wastes? How would you redesign this system? Despite the “push”, is this system better or wor

What You Find on the Floor Tells You a Lot

By Jon Miller - May 15th, 2008

Look down and pay attention to what is on the floor you walk on, the next time you walk the floor. What you find on the floor tells you a lot about what kind of thinking you will find on the floor, carpeted or concrete. Most of us look

Calculating Optimal Crew Size in Mixed Model Cells

By Ron Pereira - May 13th, 2008

I have a question for you. How would you staff a cell that produces multiple products, all with varying cycle times? In this article I will offer my thoughts and am excited to hear your comments as to how you would (or do) approach it

How metrics like OEE often dictate behavior

By Ron Pereira - May 11th, 2008

A reader of the blog asked me the following question via email. I am a production engineer for 3 packaging lines and our overall indicator is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Our OEE is calculated using the maximum speed that the

Why Do Employees Underperform?

By Ron Pereira - May 9th, 2008

The best free lean magazine I know of, Industry Week, recently discussed an interesting survey done by LifeCare Inc. where they investigated why some employees underperform in their jobs. While I am from the school that says you nee

Is Toyota in Trouble?

By Ron Pereira - May 8th, 2008

When I launched Google News this morning my eyes were immediately drawn to the headline “Toyota Posts First Profit Drop in Three Years.” To summarize the article: Net income fell 28 percent to 316.8 billion yen ($3 billion) in the

Confused about Time

By Ron Pereira - May 1st, 2008

For those new to continuous improvement the concept of time can be confusing. In this article I hope to clear up some common misunderstandings. Takt Time The word takt comes to us from the German language and literally means pace or rh

The Efficiency Conundrum

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2008

Ah yes, efficiency. If there was ever a word more abused I’d like to know about it. I don’t think there is. OK, maybe utilization. But efficiency is really butchered. So let’s dig into the efficiency conundrum a bit this evening

The Old Navy from Hell

By Ron Pereira - April 10th, 2008

My blogging goes in spurts. I seem to get on a “theme” and roll with that for a few posts. Well, regular readers of LSS Academy have likely sensed I have been on a “take action/5S” rant as of late. Well,

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