The Premise: Pareto’s Law The late Josheph Juran introduced the world to Pareto’s Law, aptly named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Many business and quality professionals alike are familiar with Pareto’s law and often refer to it as the 80 / 20 rule. In simple terms, Pareto’s Law is based on the premise that 80% of the effects stem from 20% […]
Lean – Burnout, Apathy, and Pareto’s Law
1 Way to Exceed Expectations
Although I’m still not sure that it’s possible to exceed customer expectations, something happened last night that may have given me a slightly different perspective on this matter. In November of 2009 I published an article titled, “10 Ways to Enhance Customer Satisfaction“, on the very premise that the best we could do was enhance the customer’s experience based on […]
Reality Undercover
One of the few Reality TV programs I enjoy watching is Undercover Boss on CBS. This program exemplifies all the reasons why it is so important for executive leadership and senior management to keep in touch with the front lines of the company. As a lean practitioner I consider the culture of the company to be the defining difference […]
Scorecards and Dashboards
I recently published, Urgent -> The Cost of Things Gone Wrong, where I expressed concern for dashboards that are attempting to do too much. In this regard, they become more of a distraction instead of serving the intended purpose of helping you manage your business or processes. To be fair, there are at least two (2) levels of data management […]
Toyota’s Culture – Inside Out
As discussed on our Lean Roadmap page, the culture that exists inside your company will determine the success or failure of your lean initiatives in the long-term. So, how do we cultivate and nurture this culture that we desire to achieve? Fortunately, I found a great article, How to implement “Lean Thinking” in a Business: Pathway to creating a “Lean Culture”, written by one of my recent twitter […]
Critical Process Triggers
Critical Triggers It is inevitable that failures will occur and it is only a matter of time before we are confronted with their effects. Our concern regards our ability to anticipate and respond to failures when they occur. How soon is too soon to respond to a change or shift in the process? Do we shut down the process at […]
Superbowl 45 … and a new launch!
Today, February 6, 2011, is Super Bowl 45 (XLV) where the Pittsburgh Steelers meet the Green Bay Packers. Historically, the commercials are just as entertaining as the game itself. I thought this Application made for an interesting “message” delivery service. We are also proud to announce the launch of our digital paper “Versalytics Today“, featuring articles on lean and related […]
Lean Is …
What is lean? The following definition is from the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership website, http://www.omep.org: Lean Is A systematic approach for delivering the highest quality, lowest cost products with the shortest lead-times through the relentless elimination of waste. The eights wastes that accompanied this definition include: Overproduction Waiting Transportation Non-Value-Added Processing Excess Inventory Defects Excess Motion Underutilized People It is very […]
An e-Letter from Daniel T. Jones
I received an e-mail today from Daniel T. Jones (Lean Thinking – Womack and Jones) titled “The Financial Consequences of Lean”. As the content of this e-mail is so relevant to our past discussions, I decided to share it in it’s entirety. Enjoy. Dear Redge, Why is it so hard to see the financial consequences of lean? Failure to answer […]
What are we Changing?
Our process improvement strategy is founded on the Theory of Constraints where improvement initiatives are supported by lean and six sigma tools. Process disruptions affecting flow and task execution all contribute to variance and the efforts to eliminate or reduce them are evidenced by increased stability, increased throughput over time, and increased profits. So, our main goal in production is […]
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