Internet Usage – Does it Hurt Employee Productivity?
Internet and cell phone usage are to our most recent generations what smoking was to those in the past. You’ve got people getting hired left and right who use the Internet on a daily basis, and then are asked to completely abstain from such activity from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday (barring lunch breaks).…
Tony Ferraro | February 14, 2014 | Lean | Facility Efficiency, Lean Manufacturing
3 Ways To Use a Staging Area In Your Business
In production facilities, the term “staging area” can have many different meanings specific to many different tasks. These may range from simple loading areas to complex intake and outtake centers of a business. Let’s take a look at a few of the ways that a staging area can be used: 1. Pre-Shipping Area Often, a…
Tony Ferraro | February 11, 2014 | Lean | Lean, Staging
Five Steps to Starting LEAN Successfully
In LEAN methodology, businesses become more efficient, more profitable, and less wasteful through a plethora of time-tested strategies. However, many of the strategies might not be immediately intuitive, and may therefore not have made their way into your original business plans. Many people find themselves in this position, and want to figure out how they…
Tony Ferraro | February 6, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing
Overcoming Opposition During LEAN Deployment
LEAN business practices are commonplace in the modern day, and have been for some time. Especially throughout the last two to three decades, businesses in a variety of sectors have overwhelmingly opted for LEAN/Six Sigma practices. Lean methodology is meant to increase efficiency, decrease waste, and, ultimately, maximize the profit margins of a business, and…
Tony Ferraro | February 5, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement
Panda Express – The Relationship Between Speed and Quality In Business
We live in a rapid fire world. Orders come in from online storefronts only to be packaged by assembly line robots and shipped out with computer tracking. In some industries, be they highly computerized or not, production teams can barely keep up with demand and a literally constant flow of goods is pumped out day…
Tony Ferraro | February 4, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement
Three Ways To Cut Non-Value Adding Processes From Your Business
When running any business, it’s important to trim the fat so-to-speak by minimizing wasted costs, materials, and labor hours. In many cases, however, it can be hard to identify areas in which things can be cut without stepping on the toes of your customers by compromising the value they receive. The key, then, becomes eliminating…
Tony Ferraro | January 29, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean
Why A Scorecard Is Not A Dashboard
Many businesses today use visual or progress indicators to help keep track of how operations are running. Some of the more popular methods involve using scorecards and dashboards to keep abreast of current happenings. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they have some distinct differences that are definitely worth noting. In this blog…
Tony Ferraro | January 23, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean
8 LEAN Tools You Should Already Be Using
LEAN tools and strategies focus on improving production efficiency and reducing waste, both in terms of time and physical inputs. While the term LEAN and the thinking behind it is fairly well-known, there is still a natural (though somewhat perplexing) resistance to change that keeps business owners from implementing these strategies once they’re set in…
Tony Ferraro | January 21, 2014 | Lean | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Kaizen, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing
Calculating Your Downtime Costs – And Avoiding Them
For most businesses, some downtime is inevitable. Machines break, one process or lack of materials bottlenecks the others, and things just happen. Most of the time, this is written off as what something that simply goes on without major consequence and no further exploration is done. However, I recently came across a professional discussion on…
Tony Ferraro | January 14, 2014 | Lean | Reducing Downtime
How Simple Visibility Improvements can Improve Efficiency & Reduce Waste
Over the years, I have learned that one of the biggest mistakes individuals and companies make is always looking for the big changes to reduce waste or improve efficiency. They keep focusing on finding the next big, innovative move that will result in dramatic improvements to the bottom line. While these are great when they…
Tony Ferraro | January 10, 2014 | Lean | Barcoding, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Labeling, Organized Workplace, Safety Signs
Business Performance Measurement Methods & Their Effectiveness
When it comes to running a business, one has to keep a careful watch on what’s being produced, how quickly it’s happening, and whether a factory is producing goods at a speed that can keep up with demand. By extension, this means that employees must be monitored to ensure that they are working efficiently and…
Tony Ferraro | January 9, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement
Holacracy – An Industry of the Self-Governed?
In one of the bigger business-related news pieces of the past week, online shoe mega-retailer Zappos has announced that it will be switching up its leadership by…. not having any. Actually, what’s been announced is that the company plans to shift to a “holacracy” system by the end of 2014. A holacracy is a setup…
Tony Ferraro | January 8, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement
The Paperless Warehouse – How & Why
What do bank statements, purchase receipts, and (now) your own business records have in common? They can all be paperless. Not only that, but they can be improved by going paperless. Businesses have been converting their records to an electronic format for a number of years now, and it’s not too late to jump on…
Tony Ferraro | January 7, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement
How Safety & Lean Go Hand In Hand
Over the years, factories, warehouses, and even offices have gotten safer and safer over ongoing concern for worker health and well-being. As a result, working conditions have focused increasingly on following workplace rules and keeping employees out of harm’s way for the past century. On the other side of things, businesses are constantly striving to…
Tony Ferraro | January 6, 2014 | Lean, Safety Solutions | Continuous Improvement, Workplace Safety
6 Ways Lean IT Can Help Enterprises
Lean has been helping companies streamline their production, eliminate waste, and generally improve the way things are done for many years. Initially, the concepts behind lean were primarily used only in companies and facilities that were directly involved with physical product creation, such as manufacturing plants, factory floors and things of this nature. However, over…
Tony Ferraro | December 11, 2013 | Lean | IT LEAN
