Category Archives: Manufacturing

Danaher – Lean Thinking

Posted on February 14, 2007 by John Hunter

A Dynamo Called Danaher [the broken link was removed] DBS, as it’s called, is a set of management tools borrowed liberally from the famed Toyota Production System. In essence, it requires every employee, from the janitor to the president, to find ways every day to improve the way work gets done. Such quality-improvement programs and lean manufacturing methods have been de rigueur for manufacturers for years. The difference at Danaher: The company started lean in 1987, one of the earliest … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing, Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , | 1 Comment

2007 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing

Posted on February 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Since I don’t see a the full press release on the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing site, I include it below. Related: 2006 Shingo Prize – 2006 Deming Prize – The Best Factory in the World 2007 Winners are: Autoliv Querétaro CMX Facility, Querétaro, Mexico Baxter Healthcare Corporation, North Cove Plant, Marion, North Carolina Baxter S.A. de C.V., Cuernavaca Plant, Morelos, Mexico Cordis de Mexico, Juarez, Mexico Delphi Packard Electrical/Electronic Architecture’s Chihuahua 1, Chihuahua, Mexico Delphi Packard Electrical/Electronic Architecture’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Manufacturing | 1 Comment

3M CEO on Six Sigma

Posted on February 8, 2007 by John Hunter

3M in building spree to end capacity constraints 3M should complete the first of an 18-factory build-out in the third quarter, said its chief executive late Tuesday, as it makes up for years of underinvestment on the factory floor – even in its well-known household products. “Our major challenge will be getting all these plants launched,” said 3M CEO George Buckley at a Lehman Brothers conference. Buckley, who joined the St. Paul, Minn. company just over a year ago, has … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, quote, Six sigma, Systems thinking | Tagged | 1 Comment

Top 10 Manufacturing Countries

Posted on January 28, 2007 by John Hunter

The newest data from the UN* confirms most of the recent trends in manufacturing output – most notably that China continues to grow dramatically. The data also shows a stagnation in USA manufacturing output over the last several years, though the USA remains by far the largest manufacturer. The most significant news from this latest data, I believe, is that that manufacturing output growth in the USA has been slower than global manufacturing output growth from 2002-2005. This was not … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Data, Economics, India, Manufacturing | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Toyota’s Real Secret?

Posted on January 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Well actually it isn’t a secret – it is in fact the Toyota Production/Management System. Maybe, if people assume the TPS is about improvement in the factory alone, then they could miss the true importance as the management system that it is. So I quibble a little bit with the title but this is actually a good article by John Teresko, Toyota’s Real Secret: Hint, It’s Not TPS [the broken link was removed]: Toyota’s time-to-market metrics are one measure of … Continue reading →

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

It’s Easy Being Lean

Posted on January 23, 2007 by John Hunter

Nice article, nice title too, a bit overoptimistic maybe but still nice 🙂 – It’s Easy Being Lean [the broken link was removed]: The program advocates lean manufacturing, whose main tenet is that the processes used to produce things can be made more efficient and therefore more profitable. The steps can be as simple as bringing the machines used to create goods closer together on the plant floor. Since lean manufacturing is a permanent way of doing business, not just … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Reacting to Product Problems

Posted on January 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Previously we posted on recalls at Toyota and Sony. Recently Toyota announced another large recall. Investor’s Business Daily writes on the topic in: The Ups And Downs Of Doing Product Recalls – Japan-Style [the broken link was removed]: Kitayama also said Akio Toyoda, grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, Toyota’s founder, played a key role by opening a direct line to suppliers that had supplied defective car parts. He stressed that quality comes before meeting delivery deadlines. Interesting. The article also discusses … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Manufacturing, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , ,

Manufacturing in Asia

Posted on January 13, 2007 by John Hunter

The Economist explores the trend to manufacture in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia… instead of China in: The problem with Made in China: helping China’s share of the world’s exported goods to triple to 7.3% between 1993 and 2005. In comparison, every member of the G8 group of rich nations, with the exception of Russia, saw its share fall. It is a similar story with manufacturing output. Whereas China doubled its share of global production to almost 7% in the decade to … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Economics, India, Manufacturing | 2 Comments

Fast Company: What drives Toyota?

Posted on November 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Very good article – What drives Toyota? [the broken link was removed] by Charles Fishman: So a team of assembly employees made a real decision. Don’t make the worker pick the parts; let him focus on installing them. The idea seems obvious in retrospect: Deliver a kit of presorted visors and seat belts–one kit per car, each containing exactly the right parts. The team applied the simplest technology available, the blue Rubbermaid caddy. “We went just down the road to … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 1 Comment

TPS and Jidoka

Posted on November 15, 2006 by John Hunter

TPS & Jidoka, interview of Tomo “Tom” Harada by Art Smalley: There are two different parts to Jidoka. The first meaning is to separate man from machine. It was normal in the original parent company for a single young woman to operate many machines since they were automated. So when Mr. Ohno came to the automotive company after WWII and saw one man operating one machine tool he thought that it was strange and inefficient. He embarked upon a path … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Quality tools, Toyota Production System (TPS)

Lean Canadian Company

Posted on October 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean and mean might not be enough [the broken link was removed] “I wanted all the machines working all the time,” Afeyan said as he watched a worker moving a stack of veneers into position for “cooking” in one of the pressing machines. That was before a “lean manufacturing” exercise changed Afeyan’s mind about how his factory should be organized. The article discusses that while great strides have been made the threat to success still exist from foreign (China) competition. … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing

Manufacturing Jobs

Posted on September 23, 2006 by John Hunter

The article, Manufacturing Lost 3.4 Million Jobs Since 1998 [the broken link was removed], indicates “The increased output should lead to job recovery.” I doubt it. While it is true there is a correlation between output and jobs by far the most significant trend is more manufacturing output and fewer manufacturing jobs everywhere in the world. Like so many articles talking about manufacturing job losses in the USA this one could leave many readers thinking that the USA needs to … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Manufacturing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

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 the supply chain and back to the end customer (from request to fulfillment) and this system’s (value stream’s) ability to deliver Every Product Every X with X being months, weeks, days, hours, etc. Planning and building capacity based on forecasts … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Manufacturing

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 believed that a goal of 97% was better (more realistic) and prevented quality problems from being slipped through. If the goal is 100%, the employees would say that something was not really a problem and let it go to keep … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 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 either/or, but both! And this is where the quality profession comes in. Much of what quality technology is applied to can broadly be characterized as incremental innovation. This article does a good job of explaining why “quality/lean…” should not be … 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 the factory of the future be like? It will be aware of how users are reacting to both its latest products and still-under-NDA prototypes, feeding off streams of information coming in from prototypes, recycled units, market-watching software agents, and blogs … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing