We write a lot about Lean strategies here, but they’re not the only path to improvement. You want to save money and/or reduce your carbon footprint? You probably have plenty of opportunity to do so all over your facility. Sometimes the answers are staring you right in the face. For United Warehouse Co, it was… Read more
In part 1, we celebrated the recent PMI that showed February 2017 had the highest monthly growth in manufacturing since August of 2014. With growth come new challenges for manufacturers, one being that suppliers are struggling to keep up with demand, and therefore, delivery times from them are slowing. This can hurt lead times for… Read more
The manufacturing industry is reaping fantastic growth. The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) monthly Manufacturing Report on Business uses the PMI to measure growth in the industry. The February 2017 PMI was the highest monthly PMI since August of 2014. (Read more details about the report here.) The growth is worthy of celebration, but it… Read more
Not every manufacturer will benefit from Lean. Even when applied correctly, a method that works for a company like Toyota is not tailored to benefit every operation. Manufacturers producing low volume or custom-engineered products, for example, would not improve with a technique like Kanban. These kinds of companies have to look at improvement strategies a… Read more
Did you know that the lean strategy Just-in-Time (JIT) was modeled after a supermarket? Taiichi Ohno, former Vice President of Toyota, promoted the idea of JIT from the concept that at a grocery store, the “next process” (or customer) goes to the “preceding process” (the supermarket) to retrieve the exact “parts” that are necessary in… Read more
Total Quality Management (TQM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) share similarities and are therefore often used interchangeably. Together they’re recognized as the key operational activities of a quality management system. However, they are two separate approaches to what we understand today to be Lean Manufacturing. You may think TQM is a bit outdated, as it… Read more
We’ve been discussing different lean models in manufacturing and what makes them successful. No matter what strategy you implement, lean is a continual mindset, not a one-and-done plan to execute. So if you want lean to benefit you, everyone at your company has to approach work from a Continuous Improvement point of view. This is… Read more
Any effort in Lean Manufacturing falls under the much more general umbrella of Continuous Improvement. Also called Kaizen, it’s the mindset that the employees of Toyota innately have that makes all of their other efforts so successful. Approaching your business strategy in terms of Continuous Improvement rather than solely Lean, Just-in-Time (JIT), or any other… Read more
We’ve posted some recent articles on some of the struggles that American manufacturers have had adopting lean strategies in their plants. There are many various “tools” you can use to achieve lean, some easier to implement than others. Cellular workcells, however, are successfully bringing about huge improvements in the American Just-in-Time (JIT) environment. Cellular manufacturing… Read more
Until its end destination, any widget that has left its initial starting point in the manufacturing process is considered to be work in process (WIP). The component may have many stops in its journey from point A to point B, and along there, it can rack up a lot of wastes. WIP can require more… Read more