Tips for Lean Managers Archives | Page 22 of 22

Flow Counterclockwise for a Good Reason

By Jon Miller - September 23rd, 2004

I came across an interesting article while riding the bullet train in August during our last Japan Kaikaku Experience (Lean study trip). In the September 2004 issue of Wedge magazine (Vol. 16 No. 9), science writer Hideaki Fukami explo

Making Standard Work Stick

By Jon Miller - September 18th, 2004

During a recent sales presentation to a prospective client, the issue of Standardization came up. This company has multiple factories around the globe and is struggling with a lack of harmonization between them. The Challenge of Standa

Takt Time for Executives

By Jon Miller - August 19th, 2004

We recently had the opportunity to host 15 top executives from a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company for 3 days of Lean training, benchmarking tours, and strategizing. During this process, we gained insight into Takt Time. These

Lean Fundamental: Do Today’s Work Today

By Jon Miller - July 28th, 2004

Working with clients struggling with non-Lean scheduling methods reminded me of the fundamental Lean principle of “Do today’s work today.” This principle involves avoiding late deliveries, matching capacity to demand,

Kaizen Events Build Buy-in

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2004

During a dinner meeting, I had the chance to exchange views on the progress of the Lean effort at a client company with the President. They are early in the process, having trained all employees and having done two kaizens, and are on

Kaizen is Like Climbing a Mountain: Drive Stakes in Along the Way

By Jon Miller - July 12th, 2004

The team leader of a kaizen project, we’ll call him Tim, was very disappointed in the weeks immediately after the kaizen. During his routine check-in with the machine operators, he discovered that inventory was accumulating once

Making Sense of Takt-Flow-Pull

By Jon Miller - July 10th, 2004

We’ve found a wall that people must get past when learning to think Lean. Teaching the 7 Wastes and 5S as eliminating searching, motion, errors, (7W), etc. by reorganizing the work area and making it more visual (5S) strikes most

Lean Practitioners Beware: You May be Tampering

By Jon Miller - January 10th, 2004

In a conversation with Daniel Sloan, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, CEO of Evidence-Based Decisions, and author of Profit Signals, I learned about a Deming idea known as “tampering“. What I learned is that we, as Lean practit

Pockets of Improvement

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2003

We had the opportunity recently to give a Lean Enterprise overview presentation to the parent company of a client. The parent company had recently purchased our client, and they were interested in what Lean could do for them. Our clien

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