Category Archives: Lean thinking

Toyota Management Develops the New Camry

Posted on August 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota’s Globalization Takes Shape through the Camry, speech by Gary Convis: So, even though I accept Mr. Friedman’s point that our world is quickly changing, I also believe many of our age-old principles will continue to apply. Principles like quality… value… trust in products… and running your business with innovation… teamwork… and continuous improvement. So true, see: New Rules for Management? No!. The desire to act as if we have new watersheds every year is misguided and is an ineffective … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 2 Comments

10 Kaizen Tips

Posted on August 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Kaizen Hot-Wash Lesson 6. Pick the right lean tool for the job and use it well. There are plenty of lean tools to choose for kaizen activities so your MUST determine the right tool and use it well. In our case, the spaghetti diagram was the best tool. It was simple to use although extremely time consuming for the large amount of travel in our process. The spaghetti diagram quickly showed the team the best areas for opportunity and was … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools

Lean Health Care Works

Posted on August 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Health Care? It Works! [the broken link was removed] by Patricia Panchak In 1971, the U.S. spent 7.5% of its gross national product on health care — about $75 billion. We now spend 14.5%, which is about $1.3 trillion. The article was written in 2003, by 2005 health care spending reached 15.3% of the USA economy. A group of Iowa manufacturing executives has already taken Jimmerson’s recommendation a few steps further: They’re teaming up with their health-care providers, showing … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged

Toyota Production System History

Posted on August 7, 2006 by John Hunter

Norman Bodek on TPS history: Who Can Shout Louder? [the broken link was removed] TPS focuses on improving the overall process from the customer’s demands to the delivery of the product. Prior to TPS, manufacturing companies were filled with smoke stakes, operational centers separated by machine types: the stamping machines, lathes, drilling, milling etc. each producing mountains of inventory taking weeks even months to produce an automobile. TPS focused on eliminating the wastes created by these separate machine centers. TPS … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged ,

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 — that include value stream mapping, 5S, total productive maintenance, and Kanban techniques, among others — to free up 32,000 square feet of floor space, reduce panelboard cycle time to six minutes, boost on-time delivery from 72 per cent to 92 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged

Lean Healthcare – Year One

Posted on August 1, 2006 by John Hunter

A Year in Healthcare by Mark Graban – interesting thoughts on his first year in lean healthcare, after working in lean manufacturing previously. Not that I used to operate as a “know it all” in manufacturing settings, but being in a totally unfamiliar environment really stretches you to 1) ask questions and 2) teach concepts to those who really do understand the environment, so they can “figure it out” themselves. I think that leads to better results than if I … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management

Lean Efforts at a University

Posted on July 31, 2006 by John Hunter

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 one day. More lean thinking articles.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles

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 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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing

What Is Muda?

Posted on July 27, 2006 by John Hunter

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 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. … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Lean Thinking in Printing

Posted on July 26, 2006 by John Hunter

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 are implemented on a small scale to get momentum rolling, but your thinking about change should embrace the entire business model. Well put. Over the past few months, I’ve attended industry conferences in Scottsdale, Orlando, Richmond and Chicago. Of note, … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged

Univ Michigan Hospital Adopts Toyota Methods

Posted on July 22, 2006 by John Hunter

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 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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Army Lean Six Sigma

Posted on July 21, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Six Sigma eases fiscal constraint challenges [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Public Sector, Six sigma | Tagged , , ,

Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker (London)

Posted on July 20, 2006 by John Hunter

I have very few details on this opportunity. All I know is what this Deming Electronic Network message [the broken link was removed] says. 24-hour Lean Master Class with Jeffrey Liker [the broken link was removed] 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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking

Lean Management Case Study

Posted on July 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Learning the Rules…Playing to Win [the broken link was removed] (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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged | 1 Comment

Lean Podcast – Bodek

Posted on July 18, 2006 by John Hunter

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Respect, webcast | 1 Comment

Kaizen the Toyota Way

Posted on July 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Excellent post: Kaizen Secrets of the Toyota Mind [the broken link was removed] by Jon Miller: The Toyota mind asks “What does my customer want from this process?” rather than “What do I want from this process?” The Toyota mind builds brilliant processes that enable average people to be high performers, rather than flawed processes that enable even brilliant people to be only average performers. Jon Miller has also been posting several items on the Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Process improvement, Toyota Production System (TPS)