Continuous Improvement

“Sustain” – The Long Game of Lean Culture

Sustain: Turning 5S from a Project into a Culture Anyone can clean up a workspace for a week. The challenge is keeping it that way. “Sustain” is the fifth and final step in 5S—but in many ways, it’s the most important. It’s where Lean becomes culture, not just a checklist. To sustain 5S, teams need routines, leadership support, and visual tools that reinforce accountability every day. Visual…

CSS Editorial Staff | September 2, 2025 | 5S, Lean | 5S, 5S In Action, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Labeling

5S In Action: ‘Shine’ – Cleanliness That Promotes Safety

Shine Isn’t Just About Clean—It’s About Control In the 5S system, “Shine” isn’t just about making your facility look good—it’s about creating a culture of care, ownership, and constant improvement. Daily cleaning becomes daily inspection. And every sweep, wipe, and polish is a chance to spot issues before they become problems. A clean facility is a safe facility—and visual systems are key to keeping it that way.…

CSS Editorial Staff | August 5, 2025 | 5S, Lean | 5S, 5S In Action, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Facility Marking, Labeling

Whiteboards: The Solution for the Disorganized

Creative Safety Supply has recently revealed a new product line all about whiteboards! Dry erase boards are an excellent tool for encouraging collaboration between departments and employees. However, one of the best attributes whiteboards hold is the fact that they are most often used as an organizational tool. When we say organization, it isn’t just putting objects back where they were taken from. Organization is standardization. Organization…

Mackenzie Busby | September 8, 2021 | Company Updates | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Healthcare, Kaizen, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing

PDCA Cycle Tips

Useful Tips to Help Implement PDCA One of the most effective ways to implement changes in a facility is by using the PDCA cycle. PDCA, which stands for Plan Do Check Act is a system that has been used for years by many different types of industries. It is simple enough to use that it doesn’t require too much training, but there are some tips and tricks…

Tony Ferraro | November 17, 2015 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Gemba, Kaizen, Lean Manufacturing

Kaizen Continuous Improvement – Ten Tips

Ten Tips to Help You with Your Kaizen Continuous Improvement Strategy The Kaizen methodology encourages ongoing efforts to ensure continuous improvement throughout a facility. This improvement can come in many forms including waste elimination, improved efficiency, safer work environments, and much more. Simply say that a facility is employing Kaizen strategies, is essentially meaningless if you don’t have any concrete action items you are following. Whether you’re…

Tony Ferraro | September 21, 2015 | Kaizen | 5S, 6S, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Kaizen, Six Sigma

Quality, Value, & Grade – An Exploration

Is Higher Quality Always Better? You don’t have to be in the business world to feel that, intuitively, that better quality, is, well better. Phrases like “quality over quantity” and “you get what you pay for” drive this point home for just about everyone from a young age, but have we ever stopped to think about cases in which higher quality might not actually be the best…

Tony Ferraro | September 19, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Kaizen, Lean Manufacturing

What is Lean Management?

Lean Management – A Guide To Starting Out Right Much like anything over-used and spread before those singing praises have done a lot of research, Lean is a concept that sometimes, despite the best of intentions, misses its mark. Lean principles aren’t particularly tricky, but with many offshoots and brands of the ideology, it can be easy for managers to get caught up in the misinformation of…

Tony Ferraro | June 20, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency

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 can make a peaceful, positive transition into LEAN within their business. In…

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 they do a good job. However, when making the switch over to…

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 and night. There is a constant drive toward speed and perfect efficiency…

Tony Ferraro | February 4, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement

5 Easy Rules For Kanban Success

Have you ever heard of Kanban? This LEAN principle was developed specifically to help achieve a Just-In-Time, or JIT, production cycle. In a JIT cycle, products and goods are produced in exact accordance with observed demand, rather than predicted demand. This means that instead of projecting how many widgets you need to produce in a year to meet what you predict the demand will be, you don’t…

Tony Ferraro | January 30, 2014 | Kanban | Continuous Improvement, Kanban, Lean

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 what are known as “non-value adding” activities from your process; this could…

Tony Ferraro | January 29, 2014 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean

Andon Lights 101 – How to Use Andon to Improve Production Communication

In Japanese, the word ‘andon’ means a traditional paper lamp or light. Toyota, however, incorporated the word to also be the default term for a type of lean signaling process used on work floors; that’s what we’re going to learn about today. What Is An Andon Light? In many production facilities, Andons are usually cylindrical lights attached to various machines or work stations. While a simple one-light…

Tony Ferraro | January 27, 2014 | Safety Products | Andon, Continuous Improvement

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 post, we’re going to go over some scorecard and dashboard basics, while…

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 their ways. The reality is that a scientific, LEAN approach is almost…

Tony Ferraro | January 21, 2014 | Lean | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Kaizen, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing