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 […]

OEE in an imperfect world

Background: This is a more general presentation of “Variation:  OEE’s Silent Partner” published on January 31, 2011. In a perfect world we can produce quality parts at rate, on time, every time.  In reality, however, all aspects of our processes are subject to variation that affects each factor of Overall Equipment Effectiveness:  Availability, Performance, and Quality. Our ability to effectively […]

Variance – OEE’s Silent Partner (Killer)

I was recently involved in a discussion regarding the value of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).  Of course, I fully supported OEE and confirmed that it can bring tremendous value to any organization that is prepared to embrace it as a key metric.  I also qualified my response by stating that OEE cannot be managed in isolation: OEE and it’s intrinsic […]

Remembering the Space Shuttle Challenger

Although this event happened twenty-five years ago today (28-Jan-1986), it seems like only yesterday.  This tragic event serves to remind us that humans can make mistakes and errors in judgment do occur.  In this case, history is our greatest teacher. Follow this link to CNN’s “Challenger disaster remembered“.  CNN was the only network covering this event as this would be […]

A Paradigm Shift To Profitability

Is the “Automotive Industry On the Rebound” or just the companies that make them?  Our local paper, The Toronto Star, reported some very encouraging news today regarding the state of General Motors.  The headline that caught my eye was “A slimmer GM prospers”.  What is more encouraging though is that GM’s recovery is based on a fundamentally new paradigm shift: […]