All Features
Brian Hughes
Part one of “To Root Or Not To Root,”presented a dilemma that many managers face all too often. Regardless of approach, does a problem warrant a full-blown root cause analysis? A scan of the comments to part one indicates that root cause analysis has different meanings to different people. Some…
Bill Kalmar
One of my favorite movies is a dark gangster movie starring Joe Pesci entitled "8 Heads in A Duffel Bag." Pesci, a mob courier is hired to transport the heads of eight murder victims to a mafia boss to prove that the “hits” had in fact taken place. Unfortunately and comically, the duffel bag…
In the world of marketing and branding, sticking out like a sore thumb isn’t necessarily bad, advises brand innovation specialist Chandran Dharmarajan, a co-founder of I-morph, a marketing innovation consultancy based in Singapore. Dharmarajan, who has worked for more than a decade with Unilever…
Thomas R. Cutler
Lean theory suggests that the possibilities for quality improvement exist everywhere. Rarely does that concept translate to a damaged corrugated box in a warehouse—but it should. The cost of damaged packaging, particularly cardboard containers, is very significant in bottom-line costs (damaged…
Brian Hughes
Jodi Ullman glanced at her watch: 10:25 a.m. She pushed back from her desk, stood up, and stretched—after first peeking out the door of her office toward the cubical maze to make sure no one was watching. She’d been staring at the screen of her laptop for two hours, poring over the latest…
Akhilesh Gulati
A physics exam question asked students to describe how they would use a barometer to measure the height of a skyscraper. One student who failed the test contested that his answer was correct. He was given a second chance to defend his position, verbally, to the professor. When the student didn’t…
Bill Kalmar
For the past 35 years or so, I have been a runner. My daily routine consists of a five-mile run followed by a seven-mile bike ride. Over the years, I have competed in numerous 10K (6.2 mile) events, 5Ks (3.1 mile), a marathon (26.2 mile), several half marathons; and for the past 21 years, I have…
Thomas Hinton
It was Kermit the Frog who said “It’s not easy being green.” With all due respect to my favorite Muppet, I beg to differ. In fact, it’s never been easier to be green. Kermit would be proud to know that companies around the world are finally discovering the gold in going green.
This decade,…
Douglas C. Fair
I travel too much. Invariably, though, it enriches me. I typically return with some unusual experience or a new story with which to regale my colleagues. One day, while sitting in another aluminum tube with wings, I struck up a conversation with the person next to me, an engaging, interesting…
John J. Casey
When I was a boy, my grandmother used to read me nursery rhymes to entertain me and teach me about the world. One has resonated with me for years:
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost
For want of a nail the horse was lost
For want of a horse the warrior was lost
For want of a warrior the…
Thomas R. Cutler
One of the most demanding problems lean manufacturing faces in discrete manufacturing is control of first operations, where raw material may be cut into multiple parts. First operations such as laser or CNC Punch Press processes dictate what parts are available to subsequent operations, thereby…
jmarzola
A mortgage lender in Kansas implemented a customer relationship management (CRM) solution and experienced a 304 percent return on investment (ROI) over three years. Would a similar investment make sense for your organization? Upgrading or changing your CRM system can be a big decision, and many…
Mike Thelen
As with any lean implementation in a traditional environment, culture change is the most difficult obstacle to success. A company can hire consultants, develop work teams, and begin lean initiatives, but if it only talks the talk, the initiative soon becomes just talk.
Early in 2007, we hosted a…
Akhilesh Gulati
Since one of the pillars of lean thinking is the visual workplace, why hasn’t problem solving in the workplace been taken to the visual level?
Flowcharts are popular visual tools that can show what’s currently happening, what could be happening, or what should be happening—a great opportunity to…
Ron Kirscht
Donnelly Custom Manufacturing of Alexandria, Minnesota, a short-run injection molding company, knows that proper training is vital to productivity and quality. Still, using traditional methods, training at Donnelly was taking longer than desired and employees often weren’t retaining enough of what…
Gregory Roth II
In the 1990s the theme seemed to be, “Don’t compete against your competitors, buy them and compete with yourself.” It appeared that every company was merging with another. To their stockholders, companies pitched, “We’re going to buy company XYZ and increase economy of scale for both companies and…
Akhilesh Gulati
Remember way back when you knew Newton’s Third Law, how to do long division, how to solve quadratic equations, and the difference between mean, mode, and median? As quality professionals, we’ve probably all had to learn these basic concepts at some point in our careers. Do we remember them?
While…
Bill Kalmar
To illustrate how out of place he sometimes felt, comedian George Gobel once remarked, “Have you ever felt that the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” When it comes to good customer service I sometimes feel like those brown shoes. Poor service seems to find me, as though…
knowledge.smu.edu.sg
In the world of marketing and branding, sticking out like a sore thumb isn’t necessarily bad, advised brand innovation specialist Chandran Dharmarajan, a co-founder of I-morph, a marketing innovation consultancy based in Singapore. Dharmarajan, who worked for more than a decade with Unilever in…
knowledge.emory.edu
Harley-Davidson knows how to build ownership. For decades, the motorcycle company has attracted and retained a client base that shows no signs of waning. People purchase its products without solicitation, and collectively they gladly spend millions of dollars to wear its advertising on clothes,…
Mike Micklewright
Question: Many modern enthusiasts claim that feng shui is Chinese for the practice of arranging objects (such as furniture) to help people achieve their goals. What is the American corporation translation of feng shui?
Answer: 5S (5 = feng, S = shui)
A very good client (definition: one in…
Mike Thelen
I received an interesting piece of junk mail recently. What caught my attention and provoked me to open it was simply that it was from an overseas automobile manufacturer and my lean obsessiveness engaged.
I know this manufacturer isn’t necessarily using the Toyota production system, but I…
Niraj Goyal
Abbreviations
t
Thickness of stack of product
T
Batch average of t sampled in the hour
Ta
Average if batch averages T…
Akhilesh Gulati
A recent conversation with the general manager of a manufacturer that was in the process of implementing lean methodologies provided insights as to their ongoing results. He was excited about what was happening in his company. Initiatives in the past had not been successful, and he now understood…
Peter Sanderson
Have you ever sat in a meeting room continually looking at your watch and counting the minutes left before the meeting ends? Have you wondered why—after 20 years of manufacturing similar products—you’re still discussing the same issues that reduce your profits and stunt your growth? Did you…
