Manufacturing Archives | Page 39 of 40

Management Improvement Carnival #46

By Ron Pereira - November 3rd, 2008

I have the honor of hosting the 46th edition of the management improvement carnival. So without further delay here are some of my favorite articles from the past few weeks. Kevin Meyer, of Evolving Excellence fame, recently traveled

The Right Way to Calculate Optimal Crew Size

By Ron Pereira - September 17th, 2008

Here’s the situation… the cycle time to produce one unit in our widget making factory is 300 seconds and the takt time for this product is 50 seconds per piece. In other words, in order to satisfy customer demand we need to produce

Turn off the Lights

By Ron Pereira - July 1st, 2008

Walmart is in the news with their new logo. Something that isn’t getting as much press is a new thing Walmart is also beginning to do in their stores… turn off the lights. Where are the waffles? I was recently in my local

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.

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

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

Press to Rationalize Chrysler Product Line

By Ron Pereira - February 22nd, 2008

I am finally winding down on one serious road trip across the UK and Germany. I head back home tomorrow. I have slept in 6 different hotels the past 9 evenings. It’s been crazy to say the least… especially given the f

Calculating Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)

By Ron Pereira - September 12th, 2007

One of the most powerful operational metrics I know of is Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY). It’s used to assess the “true” yield of a given process. This includes what we often call the “hidden factory” t

Increasing Return on Net Assets (RONA) with Lean & Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - August 27th, 2007

The business metric RONA (Return on Net Assets) is used by many companies in order to gauge how well they turn their assets into income. I am no accountant but do know there are a few ways to calculate RONA. For the sake of this arti

CEO Of Toy Manufacturing Company Commits Suicide

By Ron Pereira - August 13th, 2007

Today I read an article over on Industry Week that troubled me for much of the day. Most of us have heard of all the recent issues coming out of China related to quality and safety. One of the major stories was related to the paint

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