Just in Time (or JIT) is a powerful method to reduce costs and increase efficiency. However, it is also very difficult to achieve. Most times when a Western company tells me it does JIT, it turns out that this is merely wishful thinking. Let me tell you what JIT really is. I will also talk a bit about the history of JIT. Finally, I will show you a few negative examples of wishful thinking common in modern industry. In my next posts I will go into more details on how to make it work.
Whenever I am in Japan, I look for examples of lean behavior visible to the public (see, for example, Japanese Standard Pointing and Calling). This time I would like to talk about Japanese public toilets and all the nifty features to make their use a pleasant experience. You will be surprised how much thought goes into public toilets in Japan. The same level of attention to detail is also something necessary for good lean implementations. Japanese public toilets in particular do a great job servicing the not-average user!
The sales & marketing department often aims to create more and more product variants to target even the smallest niche in the market. Yet, it is common wisdom that more variants also mean more inventory.
However, the relation is not quite as clear cut. In my last post I wrote about the Relation between Inventory, Customer Takt, and Replenishment Time. The relation is similar for variants, and it all depends on the ratio of the customer takt to the replenishment time.
Inventory is helpful for a fast delivery of goods. If you have it in stock, you can deliver to the customer right away. In that respect, more inventory is better. Yet, at the same time, inventory creates cost, some visible, some more hidden. Hence, one of the goals of lean is to reduce inventory and therefore reduce cost. During my research I stumbled on a very interesting relationship between inventory, customer takt, and replenishment time. Let me elaborate …
Motivation is a key aspect to success. This applies not only to individuals, but also to corporations. Since this is not really any new revelation, many companies put in quite a bit of effort into raising corporate morale. One popular morale booster is corporate events. It is difficult to make such events truly exceptional, but most companies manage to do at least a decent job. Others, however, produce just cringe-worthy results. Or, you could say they create a night to remember. Luckily for us, these are there for all to see on YouTube . Let’s have a look!
Employment is an exchange of work for money. In my last post I showed a few tricks on how operators keep management in the dark about the true workload. However, management is also not giving out all the details on their side either. Naturally, the true value of the work is difficult to assess. Even if companies could know exactly how much each employee contributes to the success, they probably would keep this information top secret.
More interesting, however, is the value of the target workload, where operators are able to work continuously at 130% capacity without problem. The following are my own thoughts, as I have never seen these conclusions anywhere else before.
Employment is an exchange of work for money. As with most negotiations, both sides would like to keep their cards hidden, so employers and employees use different tricks in an attempt to hide the true facts from the other.
This post looks at the tricks of employees, whereas the next post will look at those of employers. As employees have more control over the work than they do over the salary, this post shows how to keep management in the dark about the true workload.
In my last posts I explained the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), common mistakes, and its history. However, there is a whole fruit stand of additional versions with some modifications that have popped up: PDSA, SDCA, OODA, ODCA, DMAIC, LAMDA, FACTUAL, Kata, and 8D – and probably more that I do not know of. Let me explain a bit on the different offshoots and alternatives of the PDCA.