Seasons Greetings

On behalf of the Lean Execution Team here at Vergence Analytics, I wish everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday! I wish you all the best of success in the new year. I would also like to thank our many subscribers for your kind comments, suggestions, and many questions. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Redge

Discover Toyota’s Best Practice

I have always been impressed by Toyota’s inherent ability to adapt, improve, and embrace change even during the harshest times.  This innate ability is a signature trait of Toyota’s culture and has been the topic of intense study and research for many years. How is it that Toyota continues to thrive regardless of the circumstances they encounter?  While numerous authors […]

Killer Metrics

Managing performance on any scale requires some form of measurement.  These measurements are often summarized into a single result that is commonly referred to as a metric.  Many businesses use tools such as dashboards or scorecards to present a summary or combination of multiple metrics into a single report. While these reports and charts can be impressive and are capable […]

Happy Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.  So, without further adieu, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Canadians and to our loyal subscribers, contributors, and visitors who make it worth our while to maintain this blog. Remember to get your free downloads from our Free Downloads box in the sidebar or from our Free Downloads Page.  Your OEE solution is […]

OEE: The Means to an End – Differentiation Where It Matters Most

Does your organization focus on results or the means to achieve them?  Do you know when you’re having a good day?  Are your processes improving? The reality is that too many opportunities are missed by simply focusing on results alone.  As we have discussed in many of our posts on problem solving and continuous improvement, the actions you take now […]

OEE: Planned Downtime and Availability

As a core metric, Overall Equipment Effectiveness or OEE has been adopted by many companies to improve operations and optimize the capacity of existing equipment.  Having completed several on site assessments over the past few months we have learned that almost all organizations are measuring performance and quality in real-time, however, the availability component of OEE is still a mystery […]

How Effective is Your Problem Solving?

Background Of the many metrics that we use to manage our businesses, one area that is seldom measured is the effectiveness of the problem solving process itself.  We often engage a variety of problem solving tools such as 5-Why, Fishbone Diagrams, Fault Trees, Design of Experiments (DOE), or other forms of Statistical Analysis in our attempts to find an effective […]

The Invisible Gorilla

Just when you thought everything was under control, someone asks you about something that isn’t even on your radar.  Our perceptions can be deceiving and are not always as accurate or reliable as we think.  This is nicely documented and demonstrated in this article and video that we found on Yahoo today:  The Invisible Gorilla. If the above link doesn’t work, cut and paste the following […]

Pivot Tables, OEE, and Differentiation Strategy

Automated systems are great at creating data and generating reports but they don’t always give us what we’re looking for.  Microsoft’s Excel Pivot Tables provide an amazing ability to create and generate custom reports on the fly and it’s easier than you may think.  Could this be a differentiation factor for how your company works with OEE data versus others […]

Viral Differentiation – Another Great Site

We are still working on our Differentiation Strategies and OEE series.  We decided to share just a glimpse of what we have found to be a uniquely evolved infrastructure within the Excel Development community. For the many Excel – VBA experts that continue to use our Excel Pages as a resource and reference for top notch sites, we have added […]