A famous step toward perfection in a lean production system is a lot size of one. However, few people realize what enormous effort and rigor Toyota applies to achieve this goal. During my visit to a Toyota plant and the APMS conference in Tokyo in 2015, I saw quite a few stunning examples of this quest. Let me show you …
Recently I learned about a new ISO 18404 standard certifying lean and Six Sigma organizations. I think this is a highly questionable idea, with little benefit for the quality of lean manufacturing. This certification madness won’t make much difference for the quality of lean but will mostly siphon off money to the International Organization for Standardization and connected bodies for certifications of little practical value. Let me show you the details …
In the last months, there has been an unprecedented power struggle between Volkswagen and its suppliers. Two of the suppliers stopped delivering, leading to a full stop of multiple production lines at six Volkswagen plants, including its main plant Wolfsburg. This whole mess comes on top of the separate problems Volkswagen has had with its Dieselgate. In this post I would like to look in more detail at what happened.
On the shop floor it is common wisdom to find the bottleneck based on the inventory. If the buffer is full, the bottleneck is downstream. If the buffer is empty, the bottleneck is upstream. Is this true? My student Carolin Romeser and I spent quite some time verifying this, and found some interesting results. In general it is true, but … the devil is in the details.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness or Efficiency) is indeed one of the most appreciated measures in lean. I counted at least eight different variants and adaptions of the basic OEE – although let me tell you that I am not impressed with all of them. Many of them seem to be theoretical academic constructs with little meaning for your shop floor. Also, identical acronyms and similar terms are often used in a completely different way, adding quite a bit to the confusion. On top of that, I think the OEE is used way too much in industry where it does not make sense, and many OEE numbers are heavily fudged. Anyway, let me show you the many different flavors of the OEE.
Yayyy! AllAboutLean.com is now 3 years old! Three years ago on September 1, 2013, I became a professor and wrote the first post on my blog. Now, 163 blog posts and one book later, I am still enjoying it immensely!
I feel that after three years of weekly (longer) postings, I am now no longer a newbie but a part of the established crowd. Thanks to all my readers for reading 🙂 , and time to look back at the last year!
Most of our prosperity and wealth is based on our ability to manufacture faster, better, and cheaper than ever before.To announce the publication of my first book “Faster, Better, Cheaper” in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond here is the fourth and last post of a series with a brief version of the History of Manufacturing. In this post I would like to talk about Toyota and its Toyota Production System, the archetype of lean Production, and also about computers and automation.
Most of our prosperity and wealth is based on our ability to manufacture faster, better, and cheaper than ever before. To announce the publication of my first book “Faster, Better, Cheaper” in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond here is the third of a four post series where I would like to explore this story and tell you a brief version of the History of Manufacturing. In this third post I would like to talk about the social problems caused by the industrial revolution and its outburst of Luddism before moving on to the achievements of Henry Ford and his assembly line, but also how his firm was overtaken by GM.