Dashboards, in their many forms, are essential to track the performance of a production system. In this post I will talk more about the Toyota shop floor dashboard. A lot of the information is from Toyota in Japan, but the images are from Toyota UK. Keep in mind that the dashboards are not a rigid … Read more
A key part of managing your shop floor is understanding the current state of the shop floor. And KPIs are an important part of understanding the shop floor. But this is also not always easy. In my experience, the three most common pitfalls are to underestimate the effort (and hence the cost) of measuring a … Read more
Some factories work around the clock. But more commonly, factories ramp up at the beginning of the week, workday, or shift and then ramp down at the end. I often have the feeling that this is a somewhat neglected topic despite its influence on safety, quality, and efficiency. Hence I would like to take a … Read more
In my last post I looked at the preparations for a proper ramp-up or start of a machine or process. This post is the second part where you actually press the button and start the machine. I will also discuss the ramp-down procedures, as well as a SMED-like approach to improve the ramp down and … Read more
It has been ten years since I started this blog. When I first posted on September 1, 2013, I never though that it would go on this long. But it has. Now there are 525 blog posts (or 663 if you include the Chinese and German translations) and a total of 765 000 words with … Read more
See also Impressum (Imprint) ● Contact General Since operating a website is potentially a legal minefield anywhere, I have added to the best of my knowledge and abilities the legalese below, containing the privacy policy . This is updated to reflect the new European GDPR Regulation being active from May 25th 2018. Since the website … Read more
See also Privacy Policy ● Contact Since operating a website is potentially a legal minefield anywhere, I have added to the best of my knowledge and abilities the legalese below, containing the imprint (in German: Impressum). Since the website is registered in Germany, the (long and boring) German text below is to satisfy these legal … Read more
Work standards are a key component to continuous improvement. A standard is a tool that (if used correctly) prevents drifting away from a best-practice approach to do a task. Hence, I sometimes read that everything needs a standard. However, I don’t quite fully agree with this. Let me tell you when standards are helpful, and … Read more