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Oshkosh Truck Driven to Succeed by Arlen Boardman:
“The goal is to turn an order into cash as quickly as you can,” he said.
Specialists in lean manufacturing systems were hired to help at Oshkosh Truck, including ones from General Motors and Ford Motor, among other big-name companies. This specialized team instills a belief in the changes and then conducts the training for the workers.
Not only is this a nice story but it is one small example of the good people working at GM and Ford. The problem is not the individual workers it is management. It is too bad that those companies, that did take great strides in the 1980 and early 1990s to improve (starting with Deming’s Management ideas) let those efforts fade away.
I followed the link from, Some Positive Lean Tales, wrote the above and then went back to continue reading Mark Graban’s post, which stated:
We seem to be thinking the same way on this one.
Another link from his post, Going Lean by Paul Marks:
Because “set-up” time when a machine takes on a new task halts the entire production line, Whitcraft has found ways to ease the transition.
Making all dies used on a punch press the same height eliminated the need to recalibrate and then test the machine before resuming work, Paul said. A transition that once took 45 minutes to an hour now requires about three minutes, he said. Workers are trained to think in those terms.
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