Monthly Archives: July 2006

Lean Efforts at a University

Bringing Lean To the Office [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading

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Curious Cat Articles

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 … Continue reading

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La-Z-Boy Lean

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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What Is Muda?

What Is Muda? [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading

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Investing Update

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: … Continue reading

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Lean Thinking in Printing

How Going Lean Made Kell Better [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading

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Another Quota Failure Example

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 … Continue reading

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VA Medical Care

The Best Medical Care In The U.S. [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading

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Univ Michigan Hospital Adopts Toyota Methods

U-M hospital takes page from Toyota [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading

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Motivation

From the Deming Electronic Network: Incentives [the broken link was removed]: 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? … Continue reading

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