Almost a century ago, Toyota started to develop its Toyota Production System, the archetype of every lean manufacturing system. Almost every manufacturing company nowadays seems to try to implement lean manufacturing. At the same time, most also seem to fail miserably, creating a lot of huff and puff with little benefit. However, occasionally there are (very) few companies that have implemented lean manufacturing successfully. Trumpf and its Synchro production system is such a successful example of Lean manufacturing, and one of the finest production system for machine tool builders. Due to the length I have split this post into two parts, the second part being available here.
Christoph Roser
The Advantage of Handwritten Data on the Shop Floor
On a modern shop floor, you will find lots of data and documentation. These are quite useful to track and improve the situation in the operations. Many of them are quite nicely printed charts, diagrams, and tables of key performance indicators (KPIs). However, when I look closer at them, I often find that they were last updated six months ago, or even more than one year ago. That is useless in practical terms! You need up-to-date information if you want to manage a process. For this, entering data by hand is most useful. In this post I will discuss different advantages of tracking data by hand on the shop floor.
The FiFo Calculator – Determining the Size of your Buffers
In my previous post, I discussed how to Determine the Size of Your FiFo Lane – The FiFo Formula. My preferred method is still an expert estimate. However, if you are interested in the math, here is a small JavaScript calculator that estimates a FiFo size for two processes.
Visual Management during World War II – A Visit to the Lascaris War Rooms in Malta
For larger improvement projects with a dedicated project team, there is frequently a “war room,” a conference room where all the project-related information and performance measures are kept. The name sounds cool and gives a certain air of focus to the project.
The name, however, comes from war rooms for real wars. Recently I had the chance to visit the Lascaris War Rooms in Malta, where I was able to see many tools and practices that are still common nowadays in manufacturing and project management.
Happy 1st Birthday AllAboutLean.com
AllAboutLean.com is one year old. Exactly twelve months ago I started this blog on September 1st with my first post, New Professor, New Blog. Since then I have published fifty-six posts. Time to have a look back. What were the most popular posts? How did visits to my blog develop? What is the outlook for the future? And what is there already in the pipeline that will appear soon on AllAboutLean.com?
Determining the Size of Your FiFo Lane – The FiFo Formula
FiFo lanes are an important tool to establish a pull system. They are often combined with kanban. However, while there is a lot of information on how to calculate the number of kanban (the Kanban Formula), there is very little information available on how large a FiFo should be. In my last post I talked about why we need FiFo lanes. In this post I want to discuss how large a FiFo should be.
Theory and Practice on FiFo Lanes – How Does FiFo Work in Lean Manufacturing?
FiFo lanes are an important part of any lean material flow. They are a very simple way to define both the material flow and the information flow. In this post I want to tell you why to use FiFo, how to use FiFo, and the advantages of FiFo, as well as show you a few examples of FiFo lanes.
Corporate Culture on Quality Starts at the Top – A Small Anecdote on Organizational Blindness
Quality starts at the top with management. Top executives like to talk about quality, but employees below usually know very well if the manager only talks the talk or also walks the walk. Words are cheap. Quality (and pretty much everything else that is important) requires attention by management.