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 […]
The Point of No Return
Method Matters and OEE
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 know the answer but assumed […]
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 […]
Killer Metrics
Managing performance on any scale requires some form of measurement. These measurements are often summarized into a single result that is commonly referred to as a metric. Many businesses use tools such as dashboards or scorecards to present a summary or combination of multiple metrics into a single report. While these reports and charts can be impressive and are capable […]
- Advanced Lean Manufacturing
- Eliminate Waste
- Environment
- Execution
- Lean
- Lean Metrics
- OEE: Overall Equipment Efficiency
- Problem Solving
- Training
Lean, OEE, and How to beat the “Law of Diminishing Returns”
Are your lean initiatives falling prey to the Law of Diminishing Returns? Waning returns may soon be followed by apathy as the “new” initiative gets old. For those who have not studied economics or are not familiar with the term, it is defined by Wikepedia as follows: The law states “that we will get less and less extra output when we add additional […]
Toyota Recall: Quality versus Quantity!
There has been much speculation about what went wrong and what is still right at Toyota. It has even been suggested that Toyota may have become blinded by the desire to be the number 1 automaker in the world. This suggests that quality and quantity are interelated and that one will suffer at the expense of the other. We would argue that this is simply not true in this […]