Seasons Greetings

This year has been filled with many new experiences, hard times, great times, and many opportunities for learning.  While some may prefer to see this year pass sooner than later, 2009 is hopefully a year that presented many new opportunities and even greater challenges. As lean practitioners, we learn to appreciate failure from a different perspective than most people would enjoy.  The focus is not the […]

Communication Breakdown – The Language of Lean

Getting people engaged and “on the same page” requires everyone to understand the language used to convey the message.  Even the method of disseminating information can create confusion.  Oral presentations can convey a completely different message than one delivered in writing. The tone used in an oral presentation cannot be delivered in writing using the same words.  Voice inflections, body language, and atmosphere […]

Lean Execution: Competing with Giants – It’s all about Speed

Sometimes you need a break from reading and learn from others who are truly walking the talk.  We trust you will find this video, “Competing with Giants – It’s all about Speed“, featuring Dominic Orr, CEO of Aruba Networks, as interesting and thought provoking as we did. This short clip will be done in less time than it takes to make popcorn. Another clip that […]

Software Modeling for Standardized Work

The concept of Standard Work is understood in virtually any work environment and is not exclusive to the lean enterprise.  Typically the greater challenge of standardized work is actually preparing an effective document that adequately describes the “work” to be performed. The objective of standardized work is to provide a documented “method” for completing a sequence of tasks that can be […]

Using TRIZ for Problem Solving – Resources

In our first post on this topic, “Using Triz for Problem Solving – Introduction“, we provided a very basic introduction to TRIZ.  In the spirit of TRIZ, it is not our intent to rewrite or redefine the TRIZ process when excellent information is already available.  Our intent is to identify the few of the many excellent and exceptional resources that we have found. What is […]

Lean Contingency Planning For Lean Operations – IT and the BSOD

Coincidentally, we are having a first hand experience with the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD with one of our laptops today.  The completely unexpected critical system error that renders Windows completely helpless.  If this isn’t on your list of IT concerns, it should be. In our case the error appears to be video related – driver or card.  Most IT […]

Going DEEP with OEE

Does anyone actually look at their daily equipment availability? Instead of using TEEP that is typically based on calendarized availability, looking at the Daily Equipment Effectiveness Performance of your operation may provide some interesting insights. Working overtime due to material or equipment availability occurs many times.  Unfortunately, we find that sometimes these very same machines are idle during the week. A detailed […]

Benchmarking OEE

Benchmarking Systems: We have learned that an industry standard or definition for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) has been adopted by the Semi Conductor Industry and also confirms our approach to calculating and using OEE and other related metrics. The SEMI standards of interest are as follows: SEMI E10:  Definition and Measurement of Equipment Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability. SEMI E35:  Guide to Calculate Cost of Ownership […]

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 […]