Lean – Burnout, Apathy, and Pareto’s Law

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% […]

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 […]

Quality is Priceless

The price tag for Toyota’s recent recall campaigns is estimated to be more than $2 Billion and the loss in share holder value is likely many times more than this.  Yet we remain optimistic and anticipate that Toyota will make it through this crisis.  We can only imagine what this kind of money could buy if wasn’t spent on repairing vehicles. In our […]

Contingency Plans – Crisis Management in Lean Organizations

Contingency Planning For Lean Organizations – Part IV – Crisis Management In a previous post we eluded that lean organizations are likely to be more susceptible to disruptions or adverse conditions and may even have a greater impact on the business.  To some degree this may be true, however, in reality, Lean has positioned these organizations to be more agile and extremely responsive to crisis […]

Contingency Planning For Lean Operations – Part I

Contingency Planning For Lean Operations – Part I Lean operations are driven by effective planning and efficient execution of core activities to ensure optimal performance is achieved and sustained.  The very nature of lean requires extreme attention to detail through all phases of planning and execution.  Upstream operations simply cannot tolerate any disruptions in product supply or process flow without the risk of […]

How to Solve Problems with Idea Maps

Problem solving is a problem in itself for many companies and at times can be one of the most daunting tasks to undertake during the course of an otherwise regular work day. For some, problems seldom occur while for others this may, unfortunately, be a daily activity.  Since problem solving is not usually part of the typical daily agenda of “routine” activities, our ability […]

Welcome to LeanExecution!

Welcome! If you are a first time visitor interested in getting started with Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), click here to access our very first post “OEE – Overall Equipment Effectiveness“. We have presented many articles featuring OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), Lean Thinking, and related topics.  Our latest posts appear immediately following this welcome message.  You can also use the sidebar widgets to select […]

How to Calculate the Quality Factor for OEE

How to correctly calculate the Quality Factor for OEE Most people assume that the quality factor for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is determined by simply calculating the yield of good parts from the total parts produced.  Unfortunately, this logic does not hold true when calculating the quality factor beyond the individual part or process. We will show you how to […]

OEE and the Quality Factor

Many articles written on OEE (ours being the exception), indicate or suggest that the quality factor for OEE is calculated as a simple percentage of good parts from the total of all parts produced.  While this calculation may work for a single line part number, it certainly doesn’t hold true when attempting to calculate OEE for multiple parts or machines. OEE […]

How to use the 5 WHY approach

The 5 WHY technique, developed by Sakichi Toyoda, is one of the core problem solving tools used by Toyota Motor Corporation and has been adopted and embraced by numerous companies all over the globe.  This technique is unconstrained, providing the team with a high degree of freedom in their thinking process. As we suggested in our “How to Improve OEE” […]