Category Archives: Management Articles

Air Products Strips Out Inefficiencies [the broken link was removed] by Rick Whiting, Information Week: Air Products standardized on continuous-improvement methodologies based on Six Sigma and lean manufacturing five years ago to boost its operating return on net assets, a metric to measure shareholder return on Air Products’ asset base. The IT operation began using about 40 continuous-improvement tools and practices 18 months ago, says Alan Jeffery, manager of continuous improvement for global IT. The methodologies are used for root-cause … Continue reading →

Business Improvement with Six Sigma [the broken link was removed] by Dr Anirban Basu (Express Computer, India IT weekly): The organisation, a CMMI-level 5 company found that although the SLA (Service Level Agreement) with its US client specified that the support time for most critical (level one) complaints should not exceed 6 hours, on the average, it was taking 8 hours with variation from 2 to 14 hours. Further, its US client told them that the support time needed to … Continue reading →

Spreading the Lean Gospel [the broken link was removed] by Rebecca Reid: Bested said lean manufacturing at the Air Fuel Modules Division was a two-fold philosophy. The first aspect was to resolve current manufacturing inefficiencies and to implement lean principles for all new programs coming in, and the second was changing the business processes involved.

Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste [the broken link was removed] by Ron Richardson “One of our wrong, old core beliefs was that inventory is good,” says Hattin. “We thought it provided rapid availability to parts and allowed us to get to work quicker. That was the first sacred cow sacrificed on the altar of Lean management.” He says there were some veteran employees who felt “a good deal of pain” when the old way of operating was tossed out. … Continue reading →

Using Lean and Six Sigma in Project Management by Derrell S. James, Quality Digest: Our subject company used tools such as 5S to establish consistent workforce organization and improve productivity per square foot of space. They used standard work to ensure consistency of the most optimal methods and communicated these to its manufacturing divisions throughout North America. By reducing inhibitors to just-in-time manufacturing, they reduced inventories, total cycle time and internal costs. However, the quality of that velocity is forever … Continue reading →

Keeping High-Tech Valley Jobs [the broken link was removed] by Ed Taylor, East Valley Tribune (Arizona) via Lean Manufacturing Blog: The company was able to make the move in part be cause of new lean manufacturing techniques adopted in Phoenix that increased the capacity of the plant by 25 percent without additional capital spending, Hall said. Engineers achieved that by changing the layout in the fab and reducing losses in the manufacturing process, Hall said. And employees were trained in … Continue reading →

Streamlined [the broken link was removed] by Derek Smith, Kokomo Tribune. Each morning for local manufacturing workers begins with a “huddle meeting” in which groups discuss a variety of operations issues. Guggina said Delphi has been recognized as an industry leader in its application of lean manufacturing. … In 2004, Plants 7 and 9 of Delphi’s Kokomo operations earned the coveted Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing.