Timing is Everything – OEE

Timing is everything. A good stop watch is one of the tools any lean practitioner will have close at hand.

I recently purchased an iPhone 6 Plus and decided to browse the App Store to see if I could find a good stop watch app.

…. And I did.

Camtasia 9 – Screen Recording and Video Editing

I upgraded to TechSmith’s Camtasia version 9 today and note some very nice improvements that make producing videos with Camtasia so much faster and easier.  Recording, editing, and creating your video is a simple process, even for novice users.  You can save or share your videos by uploading them to Screencast.com, Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, and more. It is so much easier […]

The Point of No Return

Tricks of the Trade   Work smarter not harder! If we’re honest with ourselves, we realize that sometimes we have a tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be. A statistics guru once asked me why a sample size of five (5) is commonly used when plotting X-Bar / Range charts. I didn’t really […]

Pro SQL Server Relational Database Design and Implementation

My copy of the book “ProSQL Server Relational Database Design and Implementation , 5th Edition” by Louis Davidson with Jessica Moss arrived this week.  I’m excited to work my way through it. A well designed database will significantly increase the performance of your database and greatly improve your ability to write efficient and effective SQL queries.  From a lean perspective, an […]

OEE in Isolation

OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness continues to pervade the world of manufacturing as evidenced by the number of OEE templates that are downloaded each and every day from our downloads page.  In this regard, it is interesting to note the number of OEE solutions that operate in complete isolation. A medium to large sized company typically deploys some form of […]

The Problem with Solutions

The value of a solution is a problem not worth repeating. ~Versalytics.org The 5 Why process is one of the many tools that serve to help us to state a given problem, identify a root cause, and ultimately derive a solution to resolve the concern. One of the caveats that potentially undermines the effectiveness of the 5 Why process is repeatability. […]

SQL Queries For Mere Mortals

Databases are capable of storing incredible volumes of data.  However, their true value is found when we learn to mine and manipulate that data.  Structured Query Language or SQL is the language of databases and is common – with some exceptions – to all of the major databases on the market today. A custom front end is typical of most […]

SQL and Excel

Microsoft’s SQL Server is the database solution of choice for our company.  However, like many of the database solutions available, additional data mining tools are required to provide the top level reports needed to manage the business itself. Not surprisingly, one of those tools is Excel 2016.  The correlation between a database table and a spreadsheet is intuitively clear.  While […]

Lean UX – Intriguing

User Experience in Software is enhanced through the application of Lean Principles. Discover how through this insightful book: LEAN UX – Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience – O’REILLY

Chaos in Paradise …

Have you ever wondered why or how so much time can be wasted performing what should have been a simple task?  I recently encountered a situation that could easily have been avoided if the information I received provided a little more detail including tips and traps to avoid. I’m currently writing a database application in Python that will solicit data from an SQL […]