Lean Efforts at a University

Posted on July 31, 2006  Comments (0)

Bringing Lean To the Office

A team of college students used lean to streamline processes in their university’s admissions office. The students were able to reduce a process took two to three weeks to about one day.

More lean thinking articles.

Curious Cat Articles

Posted on July 29, 2006  Comments (0)

We have added several articles to Curious Cat Articles. Recent articles added include several by Katie Gatto: Antibiotic Resistance and You, Cost of Health Care, To go or not to go, when is a virtual internship right for you? and 30 Year Old Intern.

Other articles include: Manage what you can’t measure by John Hunter and Invest in New Management Methods by William G. Hunter.

La-Z-Boy Lean

Posted on July 28, 2006  Comments (0)

Richard K. — More about the Dayton plant

Nice example of the process of transitioning to lean manufacturing.

Two years ago La-Z-Boy embarked on its lean journey, moving from batch and queue to cellular manufacturing. The Dayton (TN) plant is about 25% of the way.
…
Then we want to do everything we can to sustain the progress. That’s why we’re training the supervisors with the simulation. The TPM (total productive maintenance) teach is another way to sustain. It gives us a checklist to ensure that once we have made the changes, we know how we are keep them in place?

It’s pretty exciting stuff. We’re just going to roll with it and see what happens. If this model works, we’re definitely going to look at deploying it in other plants.

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What Is Muda?

Posted on July 27, 2006  Comments (1)

What Is Muda? by Norman Bodek

Excellent article on lean thinking, management improvement and eliminating waste.

Setup time and machine downtime are wastes and should be eliminated. I remember visiting a washing machine plant in Japan operated by Panasonic, where there was no separate maintenance department. The company taught operators in the plant to fix their own machines. And since Shingo’s great breakthroughs on setup reduction, changeovers are often done in seconds, not in hours.

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Investing Update

Posted on July 27, 2006  Comments (0)

The recent performance of some of the long term stock picks has not been good. Several continue to have pretty good results so far, including: Google, Toyota, Templeton Emerging Market Fund, Petro China.

Several have had sharp declines recently including: Dell, Intel, Yahoo and Amazon. Is it time to sell any of these stocks? I don’t think so. I am a bit less confident about Dell and Intel than I was a year ago but I still think holding the stocks makes sense. Yahoo I think is fine and will consider buying more after doing some more research. Amazon continues to disappoint on the earnings front but I still believe the long term story is strong – though again I am a bit less confident than in the past.

My favorite stock, at these prices, is the one I most recently recommended: Tesco (the stock has been doing well since then). Overall I am happy with continuing to hold all the stocks.

Lean Thinking in Printing

Posted on July 26, 2006  Comments (0)

How Going Lean Made Kell Better by Kevin Cooper

Lean is a total enterprise strategy. Lean thinking is not constrained to only manufacturing but a business strategy that involves the entire company. Many lean tools are implemented on a small scale to get momentum rolling, but your thinking about change should embrace the entire business model.

Well put.
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Another Quota Failure Example

Posted on July 24, 2006  Comments (3)

Innocent People Placed On ‘Watch List’ To Meet Quota

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal.

If this is accurate it is another example of the problems caused by using quotas. Read some excellent thoughts on management problems caused by quotas – from Jim McIngvale, CEO Gallery Furniture and author of Always Think Big.
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VA Medical Care

Posted on July 23, 2006  Comments (0)

The Best Medical Care In The U.S.

studies show that 3% to 8% of the nation’s prescriptions are filled erroneously, the VA’s prescription accuracy rate is greater than 99.997%, a level most hospitals only dream about.

This data certainly should make most hospitals interested in learning what is going on.

And for the past six years the VA has outranked private-sector hospitals on patient satisfaction in an annual consumer survey conducted by the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan. This keeps happening despite the fact that the VA spends an average of $5,000 per patient, vs. the national average of $6,300.

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Univ Michigan Hospital Adopts Toyota Methods

Posted on July 22, 2006  Comments (3)

U-M hospital takes page from Toyota by Sharon Terlep. This continues the trend (trend rather than fad because I like that it is happening :-) ) of hospitals adopting lean management methods.

In health care, the one-at-a-time approach could mean taking a patient’s call, pulling the patient’s records, scheduling a visit and performing the exam that day, rather than creating a backlog of appointments or letting people crowd a waiting room. That way, if something goes wrong, it’s easy to target where the problem happened and fix it right away.

This article gets some of the ideas down but I think presents them in a fairly confusing way. So take this for what it is a report on one more hospital trying these ideas. Then read the the many available resources to learn about one-piece flow, poka-yoke, eliminating waste, identifying errors, kaizen… rather than relying on this article. Read more

Motivation

Posted on July 21, 2006  Comments (5)

From the Deming Electronic Network: Incentives:
> I don’t think motivation deserves to be discarded to the archives of “Arbitrary Goals.”
> I have to pose this, though: was Deming explicit on best ways to handle motivation?

To me the problem is in the belief of needing to motivate workers (that is theory x thinking). I think it is much more accurate to say managers need to focus on eliminating de-motivation.

See page 125 of New Economics on the Forces of Destruction (destroying intrinsic motivation). The best motivation is internally generated. Also see pages 37-40 of Peter Scholtes‘ excellent book the Leader’s Handbook.

Most manager focus on motivating people is wasted time and effort. Instead managers would be much more effectively used improving the system, learning, coaching, eliminating de-motivation…

John Dowd says:
> I think many organizations could benefit from gain sharing/profit
> sharing plans. They generate a feeling of belonging and shared venture.

I agree with this. I wonder what others think.

More on Motivation from John Dowd

John Hunter

Army Lean Six Sigma

Posted on July 21, 2006  Comments (0)

Lean Six Sigma eases fiscal constraint challenges by Beth Reece, Army News Service:

During fiscal 2005, the Army Material Command saw $110 million in savings and cost avoidance by implementing Lean Six Sigma practices. By removing waste and better controlling output, for example, Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa., reduced costs by $11.9 million in Patriot air defense missile system recapitalization. And Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ark., reduced repair cycle time by 90 percent and increased its production of M-40 protective masks by 50 percent.

Another press release on the Army’s use of Lean Six Sigma. See: online six sigma resources and lean manufacturing resources.

Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker (London)

Posted on July 20, 2006  Comments (0)

I have very few details on this opportunity. All I know is what this Deming Electronic Network message says.

24-hour Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker
Start: October 10, 2006 5 PM
End: October 11, 2006 5 PM
London, United Kingdom

Rubicon Associates and The Deming Forum are delighted to present a Master Class with Jeffrey Liker. Prof. Liker is a world expert on the culture and methods behind the phenomenal success of Toyota and is offering an in depth view through this unique window.
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Lean Management Case Study

Posted on July 20, 2006  Comments (1)

Learning the Rules…Playing to Win (pdf)

Lean concepts are taught through discussion and hands-on discovery, not lectures.” A popular part of the experience involves various simulation exercises including the beer game, which teaches that poorly organized systems will defeat the best of people, and the airplane simulation exercise, where student groups work together to build model airplanes.

On the first try at this simulation, typically one airplane is completed in the allotted time. At the end of the weeklong session — using lean methods, tools and applications – the number of completed models usually jumps to 10.

More on the beer game and drum-buffer-rope.

via: Lean Case Study: ZF Industries:
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Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Posted on July 19, 2006  Comments (1)

photo of Shaker Bedroom by John Hunter

Photos from my visit to the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. The design of the spaces (living and working) and tools was beautiful and, in fact, very much reminiscent of lean thinking ideas like 5s.

On this trip, I also visited the Abbey of Gethsemani (where Thomas Merton was a monk) and Louisville.
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The Birth of the Kaizen Blitz

Posted on July 19, 2006  Comments (0)

The Birth of the Kaizen Blitz

What happens when productivity improves to the point where fewer people are needed? Bodek says a layoff is a mistake. He says that Toyota, rather than eliminating the poorest performers, takes the best performers from a cell and gives them something more creative to do. It’s the human side of lean that provides the payoff.

Lean Podcast – Bodek

Posted on July 18, 2006  Comments (1)

The lean blog has created their first podcast (they plan to make this a monthly feature) focused on Kaizen. I recommend it and look forward to more. They take after the good interviews they have posted in the past, including: Interview with Lean Guru Norman Bodek and Q&A with Jim Womack.

I also liked that Norman Bodek talked about the way Kaizen can help employees enjoy work (“joy in work”). Work is not likely to be all fun all the time, I have learned (my father was a professor and consultant and came pretty close to that – which gave me a skewed perception). But work is a huge part of our lives it should not be something we dread.

More posts on management improvement podcasts.

Curious Cat Management Improvement Dictionary: standardization.

Evolution of the PDSA Cycle

Posted on July 17, 2006  Comments (0)

Evolution of the PDSA Cycle by Ron Moen and Cliff Norman. Another historical article that explores the growth of management improvement concepts – this time the PDSA improvement cycle.

via: Deming Electronic Network

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