Tips for Lean Managers Archives | Page 9 of 9

Kaizen Event Fait Accompli

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2005

The title may throw you for a moment, with French, English, and Japanese all in one. The phrase ‘fait accompli’ is French for “an accomplished and presumably irreversible deed or fact”. I realized during a recen

The Perfect World or Our Ideal World?

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2005

Iain Johnstone Operations Consultant TPS is a set of tools and philosophies that model the perfect world. What some organizations, their management team and Lean consultants forget is that we need to strive for our ideal world. The per

The Power of Mapping

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2005

Iain Johnstone Operations Consultant During a recent trip to a client, myself and a team of 5 from various manufacturing departments began mapping the first three weeks of their build process. The product is very complex and labor inte

The Four Elements for Sustaining Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2005

One of the most frequent questions we encounter form our customers and prospects is the issue of how to sustain the gains made through kaizen and other continuous improvement efforts. In a recent discussion among our consultants, we ca

Value Stream Maps & Right Brain Thinking

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2005

With the increasing commitment of major firms to TPS-based Lean initiatives, Value Stream Maps are increasingly becoming items seen in board rooms as well as kaizen team rooms. George David, Chairman and CEO of United Technologies is s

Genchi Gembutsu

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2005

As we being a new year, there have been humbling reminders of one of the fundamentals of the Toyota way, namely Genchi Gembutsu. In short this means “go to the actual scene (genchi) and confirm the actual happenings or things (ge

TPM Metrics & Financial Impact

By Jon Miller - November 17th, 2004

What metrics are available when utilizing TPM to show the financial impact of your program? During a recent kaizen event, we reviewed the TPM program for one of our clients. The Operations Manager raised a good question regarding TPM m

Ownership Generates Success

By Jon Miller - November 12th, 2004

Bear McLaughlin, Operations Consultant October, 2004 During my journeys of training Office and Manufacturing Lean tools and techniques, I致e come across the same key in any business environment, OWNERSHIP, no ownership, means no succe

The Toyota Job Description: Follow Standards & Find Better Ways

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2004

The Toyota managers who share their insights with us on our study missions to Japan tell us there are two things that are part of every Toyota employee’s job. They are: 1) Follow the standard 2) Find a better way Kaizen: The Powe

Selling Autonomous Maintenance to the Machine Operator

By Jon Miller - October 18th, 2004

A client of ours has recently begun implementing TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) as the natural next step in their Lean journey. Their goals were to lengthen mean time between failures (MTBF) as well as replace time spent on reactiv

Why Kaizen Teams Should Be Cross-Functional

By Jon Miller - October 1st, 2004

The rule of thumb to have a good mix of kaizen team members from different areas is: 1/3rd of the people from the area or process targeted for kaizen, 1/3rd of the people from upstream or downstream processes (customers and suppliers)

Kaizen: Start with Production or “The Office”?

By Jon Miller - September 24th, 2004

Most Lean transformations and kaizen programs start at the Gemba (workplace, actual place where value is created) which for manufacturers is the factory. A question Lean Champions often come across is “Why are we starting kaizen

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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