Continuous Improvement

An Overview on Kaizen Techniques

Kaizen refers to betterment and continuous improvement in any area of process like manufacturing, business, nursing, management, etc. There are two elements of Kaizen: improvement and continuity. Successful implementation of this technique requires the contribution of all the workers in an organization. Every member has to be the asset of the organization. The use of Kaizen techniques leads an organization to sustain in this globalized world, improve…

Mike Wilson | September 20, 2012 | Kaizen | Continuous Improvement, Kaizen

Practicing Lean Manufacturing to Optimize Resource Utilization

Optimum utilization of the available resource is a key goal in all organizations. The main objective is to ensure each and every available resource is channeled towards adding value to the set processes in order to improve the productivity of the organization. Lean manufacturing is geared towards this and its basic tenets include the need to carry out perpetual improvements and adjustments to eliminate any wastage in…

Mike Wilson | September 19, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

Is Lean Too Elitist?

The Lean Edge, a website which touts itself as a “dialogue between business leaders and lean authors” offers some neat perspectives of lean, and inspired me to write an article about a post by Tracey Richardson. She talks about the lean term, nemawashi, which she says means “prepping the soil” or “digging around the roots” in Japanese, and is a metaphor for laying the groundwork, like in gaining…

Mike Wilson | September 12, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

What’s in It for You to Go Lean?

Jon Wetzel, at the Lean for Everyone blog, gives some ideas on how to get everybody interested in implementing lean in their workplace by making it affect them personally. “WIIFM” or “What’s In It For Me” is the basis for much of what people do both consciously and subconsciously. As lean trainers, we need to use this to our advantage when trying to transform a company. He…

Mike Wilson | September 11, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean

Continuous Improvement: 3 Tips For Getting Management On-Board

Ron Pereira, of LSS Academy, wrote a recent post titled “3 Things You Can Do When Your Manager Doesn’t Support Continuous Improvement,” and I like his proactive attitude. Face it, sometimes, your “higher-ups” don’t always back your ideas. They may have several reasons for this: maybe they don’t want you to steal their thunder or think your efforts may fail and make the department look bad. But,…

Mike Wilson | September 10, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

3 Tips to Help Develop a Strong Lean Culture in Your Workplace

Attempting to implement and sustain any new plan, including Lean, in a factory or even an office can meet a lot of resistance or bitterness, depending on the climate of your work environment and the attitudes of your employees or coworkers. Management almost always needs to be involved and educated on both the production processes of your particular workplace, the complexities of the new system, and anticipate…

Mike Wilson | September 4, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Kaizen, Lean Culture, Lean Manufacturing

Get Lean with Pizza?

Some of the folks over at the Lean Forums were expressing their need for value stream mapping (vsm) simulation games, so lean consultant and author, Bob Petruska, explained the “Pizza Game” which he plays with his Schwan coworkers (he uses this analogy because one of the Schwan plants makes frozen pizzas). According to Petruska, they draw the factory to scale on a table with grid paper, and…

Mike Wilson | August 29, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

Active Lean Implementation at GE Manufacturing Plant

This was a cool find for me today. It shows a GE plant in Kentucky seeking to improve efficiency through lean practices. It starts with mapping it out with an enormous Ishikawa diagram, or fishbone chart, then moves onto a 1/4 scale mockup of the plant using homemade models, then to a full-scale mockup of how the layout footprint will look with actual life-size mockup machines, belts,…

Mike Wilson | August 27, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

Continual Improvement and Lean Begins At Home

On the Lean Journey blog, author Tim McMahon talks about how he found a great video by woodworker and continual improvement maven, Paul Akers’s most recent addition to helping us to increase our efficiency and decrease our downtime with his newest video, in which he organizes a ‘junk drawer,” and shows how easy adding some tool foam and dividing the tools inside into their own compartments really…

Mike Wilson | August 23, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Organized Workplace, Tool Organization

Deming’s Contribution to Japan and Continual Improvement

W. Edwards Deming (photo courtesy of Wikipedia) I was reading Mark Graban’s Lean Blog today, and he mentioned the importance of W. Edwards Deming’s work with the Japanese. The idea of continual improvement was not Deming’s invention, but he certainly became one of the symbols of it, first to many Japanese manufacturers, and then later, ironically, to his own countrymen in the United States via their study…

Mike Wilson | August 22, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean

Leaders Lead! 3 Tips to Improve Your Leadership Abilities

Richard Lorenzen, in his Forbes article, “The Art Of Leadership: Become A More Effective Leader In 3 Steps,” outlines three things that make an exceptional leader. As a businessman and boss, I often read articles and books about how to be a better leader, but I think Lorensen boils it down to its most basic in the post; he states that it is critical for all leaders…

Mike Wilson | August 6, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing, Workplace Leadership

When Strict Rules Don’t Work in Lean Manufacturing

Have you heard the story about the lifeguard in Florida who was fired because he saved a swimmer’s life?! Mark Graban writes an interesting post on his Lean Blog about the incident. In his post Lifeguard Saves Swimmer, Gets Fired, Graban compares the shocking response to the lifeguard’s laudable action to possible consequences of overly strict rules in the Lean work place: A lifeguard, Tomas Lopez, was…

Mike Wilson | July 12, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing

Why Rethink Business With Kaizen?

What is it? How can this help my company achieve higher goals? In an economy focused on regrowth and restructure, businesses all over are trying to innovate wherever they can. Kaizen can be the beginning of looking at business like never before. In a typical corporate structure top to bottom, the corporate level makes all the decisions. Under the Kaizen model every level; from CEO through the…

Mike Wilson | July 10, 2012 | Kaizen | Continuous Improvement, Kaizen

What is Needed for Hiring for a Lean Culture?

Here’s a question from a healthcare leader that I thought I’d share for input from you, the blog readers. This person is looking to change their hiring and people “sourcing” practices after visiting ThedaCare and learning about their “Human Development Value Stream” work. Based on your experience, what do you think are the most important characteristics/attributes a person needs to have to be successful in a Lean…

Mike Wilson | July 4, 2012 | Lean | Continuous Improvement, Kaizen, Lean, Lean Culture