All ideas for improvement begin with the end in mind; our thoughts quickly consider how much money we could save or the anticipated market share increase. These thoughts in and of themselves are not wrong but can be distracting when it comes to putting a plan together which helps turn big ideas into reality. [CONTINUE READING]
May 15th, 2012
Planning for Continuous Success
dwilt
May 2nd, 2012
Getting people and EMI systems on the same page
Paula Waddell
Our common industrial temptation is to focus on the "easy" engineering part of management systems while deferring the more difficult people part of incorporating the system into the daily work life. However, we need to give organization and workforce issues the same attention if we are to develop successful and sustainable manufacturing management systems. [CONTINUE READING]
April 18th, 2012
Creating a Continuous Improvement Culture in a Decentralized Company
smiller
I recently read a blog on Manufacturing-Executive.com entitled Creating a Continuous Improvement Culture in a Decentralized Company. I found this blog post and subusequent comments to be spot on. In my opinion, deploying and managing CI in a decentralized environment is not significantly different than having effective HR, Technical, Finance, etc organizations. If a decentralized organization does those well then they have the building blocks for doing CI well. [CONTINUE READING]
April 3rd, 2012
Measuring Benefit
smiller
"You can’t change what you don’t measure". It’s been said many ways for such a long time that it has become cliché. So much so that many manufacturers (and consultants) measure anything that moves…literally. But does all that measuring realize any benefit?
Measurement can be costly in both tangible and the often overlooked intangible ways. If one is going to incur the cost of measuring something shouldn’t it provide the capability to drive improvement and change or at least problem avoidance? The hard part is that we often don't know if a measurable result will drive action. Herein lies the quandary... So, where do you start? [CONTINUE READING]
February 21st, 2012
When They Talk Success But Describe Failure… Sound Familiar?
rbansek
Have you ever left a conversation on continuous improvement and wanted to "beat your head against the wall"?
Having listened, listened and listened…. you heard the other party talking, but not making much sense? You heard them talking about success, but describing failure? You heard them talking about results without any hard data? [CONTINUE READING]
February 1st, 2012
Experts Say MRP Should Adapt to LEAN – Great, But What About The People?
rbansek
Recently, as I was browsing other manufacturing sites, I came across the following blog that deals with the link between MRP Systems and Lean principles:
While the conflict/alignment that was written about is real between technology tools and continuous improvement processes, there is a third dimension that Derek leaves out. What role do people play in the success of technology tools in a Lean journey? [CONTINUE READING]
January 18th, 2012
Naysayers – Friend or Foe?
smiller
For all those who work to deploy projects and solutions both internally and for a client, Project Management 101 says find your champions, your coaches, and your supporters. Build your team with those who buy-in and who can visualize what you are trying to accomplish. A natural tendency is to shy away from the naysayers, the difficult ones, the vocal detractors. [CONTINUE READING]
November 2nd, 2011
Enabling, Empowering, or Both?
rbansek
Recently I commented on the 5 reasons one of our clients deemed his project successful. One of those reasons was employee engagement…
I also recently asked, “What do baseball and continuous improvement have in common?” Might one answer to that question be Employee Engagement? [CONTINUE READING]
September 22nd, 2011
A Star is Born?
dwilt
Continuous Improvement projects depend heavily on “Stars” to lead different sections of a process or project.
Stars are defined as those who embrace change and are generally considered very good performers for an organization. [CONTINUE READING]
September 8th, 2011
Engaged…. or Not?
rbansek
Earlier today I was reviewing a presentation that an Executive presented recently at Packaging Automation Forum. You can find a review here http://www.packworld.com/article-31703. The primary assertion of his presentation was that the program was and is successfully generating results and changing their culture.
He outlined many of the success criteria that I see from manufacturing:
1. A significant increase in OEE
2. A significant increase in first pass yield
3. Insight into several million dollars of cost avoidance [CONTINUE READING]
