Category Archives: Manufacturing

Flexibility in Lean Manufacturing

Posted on September 16, 2006 by John Hunter

What is Flexibility for Lean Manufacturing? [the broken link was removed] by Jon Miller: True flexibility should be a measure not of a machining system or an assembly department but of an entire value stream from the end customer through … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Comments Off

Japan Kaikaku Experience

Posted on September 14, 2006 by John Hunter

Mike Wroblewski is blogging a great series of posts on his Japan Kaikaku Experience, including Toyota Motor Kyushu: An interesting point is that the assembly line had a goal of only 97% uptime. They did not want 100%. It was … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged Japan, lean manufacturing, Lean thinking, Quality tools | 1 Comment

Quality Technology and Innovation

Posted on September 2, 2006 by John Hunter

The Future of Quality Technology: From a Manufacturing to a Knowledge Economy and From Defects to Innovations [sadly the link to ASQ fails, sigh, http://www.asqstatdiv.org/documents/newsletters/Winter06StatDiv.pdf] by Soren Bisgaard: we need to be good at both breakthrough and incremental innovation. Not … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Management, Manufacturing, Statistics | 2 Comments

Cyberpunk Manufacturing

Posted on August 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Raising the Floor by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang: The transformation of the factory from a vast machine into a creative, knowledge-intensive space is a development few could have seen. Are you ready for the next industrial revolution? … So what will … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing | Comments Off

Danaher Practicing Lean Thinking

Posted on August 22, 2006 by John Hunter

Manufacturer’s Acquisition Strategy Sets It Apart From The Pack [the broken link was removed], Investors Business Daily: “It’s adapted from the Japanese Kaizen system,” Holmstead said. “Kaizen is a way of removing waste and standardizing processes and bringing underperforming or … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged business, Investing, Lean thinking | 1 Comment

Toyota’s New Texas Plant

Posted on August 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota exec stands up to Texas heat [the broken link was removed] by Cheryl Hall: Toyota’s new Texas plant is coming on line and will further increase Toyota’s contribution to the US economy, by buying from local suppliers and most … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Comments Off

Manufacturing Value Added Economic Data

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

In our post on Manufacturing and the Economy we examined global manufacturing value added economic data. The World Bank has provided updated data, for 2002, which we provide below. In, Global Manufacturing Data by Country, we explored data from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Manufacturing, quote | 3 Comments

Switching to Lean

Posted on August 3, 2006 by John Hunter

Switching to lean [the broken link was removed] by Vanessa Chris: Since Eaton implemented lean manufacturing practices across its 235 plants in 2003, this facility has ranked number one for three years running. It used Eaton’s eight lean tools — … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged lean manufacturing | Comments Off

La-Z-Boy Lean

Posted on July 28, 2006 by John Hunter

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 … Continue reading →

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Better Manufacturing in UK

Posted on July 16, 2006 by John Hunter

My design for better manufacturing in UK [the broken link was removed] by James Dyson: The way forward is to make things that are better designed, better engineered and with better technology than our competitors’ products. This is the blueprint … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Manufacturing, Science, UK | Tagged Manufacturing, UK | Comments Off