Matt Wrye of Beyond Lean set up a poll to see who was interested in reading about lean. According to Wrye, the majority of folks reading about lean on his blog were in middle management: “Who is reading Beyond Lean? 1. Mid-Level Managers = 40% 2.Senior Level Managers = 20% 3. Consultants = 20%” This came as no surprise to Wrye, as he himself is a self-described…
Mike Wilson | October 25, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing
I am constantly on the search for great content to share with readers. This vid by Lean Deployment really helps to inform people on the basics of 5S and their business.
Mike Wilson | October 19, 2012 | 5S | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Lean
Tim McMahon at A Lean Journey, added a blog post about what he considers to be 5 misconceptions and myths about lean. He notes that they are these: 1. Lean is only about cost reduction. 2. Lean makes employees feel like robots. 3. Lean is just about applying tools. 4. Lean is something you do in addition. 5. Lean means no inventory. Although Tim does his best…
Mike Wilson | October 18, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing
While scouring the web looking for relevant material to share with you about how to implement lean manufacturing in your company, I came across this quick little free cartoon that explains what is lean manufacturing. I love things that are able to boil more complex ideas down into much more digestible bites. I particularly like how animations have a way of simplifying and summarizing visuals so…
Mike Wilson | October 17, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing
I find that, when it comes to manufacturing, office, or healthcare implementations, folks don’t really understand lean when they’re first shopping the concept. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest a fraction of your time and money right out of the box toward quality education and consultation to help you get the right info before you spend the larger portion of time and money in creating…
Mike Wilson | October 16, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing
Kanban is a system that was developed long ago by a very well known company, Toyota. It is very popular in the world of business and is widely used due to its uniqueness and ease in use. This system has brought modern planning, working conditions, management and other aspects of business. Due to these, Kanban system produced most of the successful business globally. With this system, time…
Mike Wilson | October 16, 2012 | Kanban | Continuous Improvement, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing
I’m trying to keep up with my lean thinking, and with that comes lean reading. This stuff can be dry sometimes, but I always come away with some nugget of gold from each book I read on the subject. Lonnie Wilson’s book, “How to Implement Lean Manufacturing” is a great one to add to the library. Like most good teachers, Wilson adds loads of practical advice and…
Mike Wilson | October 15, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean, Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a powerful type of production system that was created by Toyota after the World War II. It involves 5 tools and principles that contribute to its success such as 5’S, Kaizen, JIT or Just in Time, Value Stream Mapping and Kanban. The focus of this article is about just-in-time that works excellently in manufacturing industries. Just In Time – A Smart Approach The many…
Mike Wilson | October 12, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean, Lean Manufacturing
A3 image via Reliableplant.com Today, I was looking for a decent A3 problem-solving template for an engineering friend who was planning on implementing a lean program for his company, and I came across a helpful article on ReliablePlant.com by Larry Rubrick and a cool A3 powerpoint presentation at PowerShow.com (don’t hit download, just hit play). As many people may know, the A3 format originated around the type…
Mike Wilson | October 11, 2012 | Lean | A3, Continuous Improvement, Lean, Lean Manufacturing
The lean manufacturing system is a being employed in a great number of companies these days. But then, this is not a new thing at all since it has been in existence for more than two decades. Due to its reported success, this system has been adopted by many corporations hoping to obtain the same success of other companies who have used the system long ago. In…
Mike Wilson | October 4, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing
Mark Hamel’s Gemba Tales blog is one website to which I continually return. Hamel is an accomplished fellow, and that comes through in his writing. Without sounding haughty or pompous, Hamel can throw real-world examples into his posts, and the reader will come away with something they didn’t know before. So, when he was writing about simplicity and its relationship to lean, I couldn’t help but take…
Mike Wilson | October 2, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Gemba, Lean
I love this video – you may have seen it already when it was an initial viral hit, but I ask that you watch it again from a lean perspective. It’s about a plucky little boy who uses his energy and ingenuity to build a dream from nothing but old boxes and tape. I like to think it’s an homage to two of the lean pillars, continuous…
Mike Wilson | September 28, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean
image from wikipedia I read an inspiring post today by Robert Hafey on the Lean Safety blog about his attempts to apply his lean training and expertise to something as basic as cooking food and serving it to a large group of people, but, the best part of the article wasn’t the lean angle. It was who he was serving. He and six other close friends and…
Mike Wilson | September 26, 2012 | 5S | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Lean
Kanban is an inventory and replenishment system that assists in determining what, when, and how much to produce. It is a scheduling system that maintains inventory levels used in lean manufacturing or Just-In-Time (JIT) production. When material is consumed, a signal is sent to produce and deliver another shipment. It is a ‘pull’ system of production based on planned elimination of waste and continuous improvements of productivity. …
Mike Wilson | September 25, 2012 | Kanban | Continuous Improvement, Kanban
Ron Pereira over at the LSSAcademy.com offered a really cool video that pits regular mass production vs. one piece flow, and his simulation produced a time savings with the one piece flow. In his video, what I found to be as interesting as his presented material were the comments at the bottom by professionals in manufacturing. They all seemed to think that one piece flow definitely has…
Mike Wilson | September 25, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean
