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Tag: lean manufacturing

Management Improvement Jobs

• Quality Manager

• Director, (Lean) Operational Excellence

• Manufacturing Engineer

• Global Lean Supplier Development Manager

Management Books

• The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos
  Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology five-million-dollar, fourteen-country International Motor Vehicle Program's five year study on the future of the worldwide auto industry.

• The New Economics: : For Industry, Government, Education by W. Edwards Deming
  Second Edition (reprint). The best of Deming's books for learning about his system for management. Packed with great thoughts but not as easy to read as the best books. This is a great book, but often it is best for managers already committed to finding new ideas.

• Out of the Crisis: by W. Edwards Deming
  A classic but not an easy book to read. Packed with good ideas that still have great merit. New paperback printing (2000).

• Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions by Michael L. George
  "Lean Six Sigma for Service provides a service-based approach, explaining how companies of all types can cost-effectively translate manufacturing-oriented Lean Six Sigma tools into the service delivery process."

• Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones
  "few companies today see consumption as a process -- a series of linked goods and services, all of which must occur seamlessly for the consumer to be satisfied. Buying a home computer, for example, involves researching, purchasing, integrating..."

• Rebirth of American Industry: by William H. Waddell, Norman Bodek
  

• Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno by Taiichi Ohno
  "If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32

• Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker, David Meier
  Toyota Talent walks you through the rigorous methodology used by this global powerhouse to grow high-performing individuals from within. Beginning with a review of Toyota's landmark approach to developing people, the authors illustrate the critical importance of creating a learning and teaching culture in your organization. They provide specific examples necessary to train employees in all areas-from the shop floor to engineering to staff members in service organizations-and show you how to support and encourage every individual to reach his or her top potential. Toyota Talent provides you with the inside knowledge you need to * Identify your development needs and create a training plan * Understand the various types of work and how to break complicated jobs into teachable skills * Set behavioral expectations by properly preparing your workplace * Recognize and develop potential trainers within your workforce * Effectively educate non-manufacturing employees and members of the staff * Develop internal Lean Manufacturing experts

• Just-In-Time for Today and Tomorrow: Japanese Management Series by Taiichi Ohno
  

• Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother
  "Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture." —Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way

• Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System by Art Smalley, Durward K. Sobek
  Winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize. The A3 report has proven to be a key tool In Toyota’s successful move toward organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and improvement, especially within its engineering and R&D organizations. The power of the A3 report, however, derives not from the report itself, but rather from the development of the culture and mindset required for the implementation of the A3 system. In other words, A3 reports are not just an end product but are evidence of a powerful set of dynamics that is referred to as A3 Thinking.

• Gemba Walks: by Jim Womack
  This book complies Womack's essays on the practice of lean and adds some additional context to the essays.

• Toyota Under Fire: Lessons for Turning Crisis into Opportunity by Jeffrey Liker
  Toyota Under Fire, 2011 Shingo Prize Winner, takes you beyond the headlines and into the offices and factories of Toyota to reveal the truth behind the company's highly publicized and controversial recall of over 10 million vehicles.

Management Articles

• Lean Programming - part 1 of 2 by Mary Poppendieck
  "Assembly-line production techniques apply to software, too."

• Dr. Demings 1950 Lecture to Japanese Top Management
  "In 1950, Dr. Deming gave a lecture to 80% of the top management people in Japan. What follows is a English translation of the original Japanese transcript. John Dowd made this happen a few years back and has agreed to share it with the Deming Community."

• Lean Six Sigma - A Perspective by Norman Bodek
  "Lean focuses on identifying value as perceived by the customer and then eliminating everything that isn't value, the waste, out of the process. Lean comes from the industrial engineering discipline, whereas Six Sigma comes out of the statistical quality" scroll down once you follow the link

• A Lean Walk Through History by Jim Womack
  "Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with its many advances and setbacks, it's easy to begin filling in some of the other milestones: By 1765, French general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had grasped the significance of standardized designs and interchangeable parts to facilitate battlefield repairs. (Actually doing this cost-effectively in practice was another matter and required another 125 years.)"

• Going Lean in Health Care by Jim Womack
  "Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients ? the 'customers' at the heart of it all."

• The Best Factory in the World by Norman Bodek
  From his book, Kaikaku : "Pictures of areas of the factory or the office hung throughout the plant. Workers were encouraged to look at the pictures and talk about them toget

• TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Art Smalley
  "In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process), as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations to improve quality, cost, productivity, lead-time, safety, morale and other metrics as needed. This clear objective has not substantially changed since the first internal TPS training manual was drafted over thirty years ago."

• Leading Lean: Missed Opportunity by Jamie Flinchbaugh
  "However, once pull production is implemented, you no longer have your security blanket. You must deal with a problem immediately or your company feels the pain."

• Shigeo Shingo: Influence on TPS by Art Smalley
  An Interview with Mr. Isao Kato. "his main contribution to Toyota was actually as an instructor of fundamental process improvement methods and developer of several thousand manufacturing engineers in the company. This influence should be properly recognized as we all learned a great deal from him on how to see problems in production."

• Lean Health Care? It Works! by Patricia Panchak
  "A group of Iowa manufacturing executives has already taken Jimmerson's recommendation a few steps further: They're teaming up with their health-care providers, showing them the benefits, educating them on the principles and practices, and helping them to

• A3 Reports: Tool for Process Improvement by Durward K. Sobek, Cindy Jimmerson
  "Toyota uses it to systematically guide problem-solvers through a rigorous process, document the key outcomes of that process, and propose improvements. The tool is used so pervasively that it forms a keystone in Toyota's world-famous continuous improvement

• Jim Womack podcast on Lean in China by Jim Womack
  Jim Womack talks about the state of lean manufacturing in China on the lean blog.

• The Role of Leadership in Software Development by Mary Poppendieck
  "In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about 'the matrix problem', alignment, waste cutting, planning

• The Top 10 Titans of TPS by Jon Miller
  "1. Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company. He revolutionized repetitive manufacturing of automobiles through standardization of parts, the moving assembly line and continuous improvement or product and process. Inspired imitation by Toyoda.

• Lean Thinking and Management by John Hunter
  "The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart."

• Kanban Family Job Chart by Peter Abilla
  "Our family needs something that is visible, without equivocation, and shows the Person, Jobs, Day, and Status. So, we created a Kanban Family Job Chart ... We want, instead, to teach self-reliance, demonstrate our trust in the kids, and help them grow

• Comparing Lean Principles to the 14 Toyota Principles
  "Toyota Principle #1: Base Your Management Decisions on a Long-Term Philosophy, Even at the Expense of Short-Term Financial Goals. ... Stopping to fix problems puts an organization in a systematic problem solving method (Lean Principle #4) so that bad quality is not passed on and variation is reduced from the system."

• Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work by John Hunter
  "Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building? ... You don't need to think about empowering people if you have a system that lets people take pride in what they do. If you think you need to empower staff, instead fix the system that requires you to think they are in need of empowerment."

• How do you know when do to an A3, and when to just solve the problem by Tracey Richardson
  "If there was a defect that got past an area/department and to the customer, this is unacceptable and should be counter-measured temporary (stop the bleeding) to ensure nothing else 'flows out' as well as finding the permanent countermeasure (using PDCA) (again this is all initiated by the plant manager--they should be responsible at this level and gather the resources necessary, and involving their people to ensure this will not happen again and learn from it for the the next A3)."

• The Equally Important “Respect for People” Principle by Bob Emiliani
  "The 'Respect for People' principle encompasses all key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Thus, rather than representing a single dyad, the 'Respect for People' principle is a multilateral expression of the need for balanced, mutually respectful relationships, cooperation, and co-prosperity with these key stakeholders."

• Respect for People by Art Smalley
  "The fifth item of my list pertains to development of employee talent over time. Respect for people means developing their latent skills in both on the job and off the job training. It is easy to invest money in new technology, software, or equipment. It takes time, effort, and planning to invest in employee skills development. Canned training programs and Powerpoint slide presentations do not do the job."

• You say tomato, I say tomato by Tom Southworth
  "To me, Lean has at its core four very simple ideals. It is: safer, easier better, economical"

• Starbucks, Queueing Theory, Constraints, and Lean by Peter Abilla
  "If establishing a consistent order fulfillment drumbeat is important, Starbucks needs to do the following: 1) Reduce, immediately, the number of product combinations. 2) Model the properties of each of those combinations in both time, material, information, steps, and flow. But, focus on the 80/20 – the most ordered combinations first..."

• Zenjidoka - A Simple Tool for a Complex Problem by Norman Bodek
  "Had the tools of the Toyota Production System been extended from the factory floor worker to every employee who makes contact with the customer, Toyota could have dramatically reduced the resulting financial impact and human tragedy. ... Zenjidoka is a new word meaning "Total Jidoka." Instead of confining Jidoka to the factory floor, Zenjidoka extends Jidoka to every employee who has any contact with the end customer."

• Robust Experimental Strategies for Improving Upstream Productivity by Ronald D. Snee
  Two methods can be used to increase the speed of upstream development, which in turn speeds up the development of process understanding: * using Design of Experiments (DOE)-based strategies to design, analyze, and interpret experiments, resulting in getting better information in a timely fashion * using Lean principles to streamline the availability of information, materials, equipment, measurements, and personnel for the experimental process, thereby accelerating the flow of the experimental process.

• Resist your machine thinking! by Jeffrey Liker
  "To maintain consistent output, one must continually adjust the system to changing environmental conditions. This is called dynamic homeostasis in systems thinking, or running to stay in place. ... Maintenance comes from having clearly defined standards, observing carefully for deviations from those standards, and then developing and implementing countermeasures to eliminate the deviations."

• Why Lean Programs Fail by Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
  "a large survey conducted by Industry Week in 2007 found that only 2 percent of companies achieved their anticipated results... When we look at lean in this way it is not only a set of techniques for eliminating waste, but a process by which managers as leaders develop people so that desired results can be achieved, again and again. That means coaching people in practicing an improvement kata every day."

• 7 Amish Habits to Make You Lean and Wealthy by Jon Miller
  "Permit experimentation. While each Amish community adheres to their rules or "Ordnung", there is local variation between communities. For various reasons communities chose to allow certain innovations."

• 7 Amish Habits to Make You Lean and Wealthy by Jon Miller
  "Permit experimentation. While each Amish community adheres to their rules or "Ordnung", there is local variation between communities. For various reasons communities chose to allow certain innovations."

• Dr. Demingʼs Camping Expedition
  "Asking why all the time is the most effect route to overcoming problems. "The only drawback to it Iʼve found is when youʼve needed only three whys to get to the root cause, some determined people still go on to ask two more. Or else they stop at the fifth, even if they havenʼt gotten to the root cause... Blinded by the quality tools and techniques, you have missed the completely obvious"

• Why Create Poka-yokes, and Why Disconnect Them? by Michael Ballé
  "Lines with overly complex Poka-Yoke devices tend to lose much productivity by having operators simply run the part through the detection device again until a part would be consistently stopped. Not surprisingly, production management can be tempted to simply disconnect the poka- yoke in order to run the line."

• The Gemba Walk by Norman Bodek
  "the plant manager got up from behind his desk. He asked me to join him on his daily walk; in fact he told me that he walked the plant twice a day every day and that it was the most valuable part of his day... The plant manager asked those questions and you could see the excitement on the face of the supervisor as he was answering the questions. I learned that there’s enormous power in the leader asking questions and then just listening – yes; this is the key to ask the question and then to just listen carefully, not judgmentally."

• Are lean principles universal? by Michael Ballé
  "There is only one golden rule: we make people before we make parts. This requires a spirit of challenge, open mind and teamwork, as Pascal Dennis phrased it in his great lean novel Andy and Me. Every industry is different, but all human beings share the same capabilities and potentials – that is universal. As one Sensei once told me, the biggest room is the room for improvement."

Management Web Sites and Resources

• Gemba Panta Rei by Jon Miller
  Great blog on lean manufacturing topics by Jon Miller.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Articles by John Hunter
  Hundreds of useful management articles hand selected to help managers improve the performance of their organization. Sorted by topic including: Deming, lean manufacturing, six sigma, continual improvement, innovation, leadership, managing people, software development, psychology and systems thinking.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog by John Hunter
  Blog by John Hunter on many topics to to improve the management of organizations, including: Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, evidence based decision making, customer focus, innovation, six sigma, systems thinking, leadership, psychology, ...

• Lean Manufacturing Blog by Mark Graban
  News, articles and podcasts on the the lean manufacturing with a focus on health care by Mark Graban.

• Toyota Production System
  Site on Toyota.com. "The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called 'jidoka'(which can be loosely translated as 'automation with a human touch') which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of 'Just-in-Time,' in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow."

• Jamie Flinchbaugh by Jamie Flinchbaugh
  Blog on lean culture, transformational leadership, and entrepreneurial excellence. Jamie is a consultant and co-author of The Hitchhiker.s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road.

• Lean Six Sigma Academy by Ron Pereira
  Blog by Ron Pereira explaining how I believe lean manufacturing and six sigma can and should work together in harmony.

• Evolving Excellence by Kevin Meyer, Bill Waddell
  Excellent and opinionated blog focused on lean manufacturing by Kevin Meyer and Bill Waddell.

• Gemba Tales
  Blog by Mark Hamel exploring experiences (some successful, some not) of the author and other lean practitioners and shared for the purpose of providing insight into the application of lean concepts.

• Performance Improvement
  Blog by Glenn Whitfield focused on business management, lean, strategy, and related topics.

• Lean Six Sigma for Law Enforcement
  Blog by Sergeant Billy Wilkerson (with the Jacksonville, Florida Shefiff's Office).

• Beyond Lean
  Blog by industrial engineering with the theme of reflecting on lean management and the idea that business units should be educated on lean thinking and principles.

• Lean Enterprise Institute by Jim Womack
  "We carefully develop hypotheses about lean thinking and experiment to see which approaches work best in the real world. We then write up and teach what we discover, providing new methods for organizational transformation. We strive to answer the simple question of every manager, "What can I do on Monday morning to make a difference in my organization?" And, by creating a strong Lean Community through our website and public events we try to give managers the courage to become lean change agents."

• Fashion Incubator
  Blog by Kathleen Fasanella with posts on lean manufacturing in the production of fashion and clothes.

• Learning about Lean
  "I started writing Learning About Lean in September 2002. It chronicles my efforts to implement the Toyota Production System in now two different orginizational settings." by Joe Ely

• Shmula by Peter Abilla
  "This blog is my take on technology, business, operations, The Toyota Production System / Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Queueing Theory, operations research, building software, the customer experience (especially ethnography and design thinking and word-of-mouth marketing)"

• Quality Digest
  Magazine covering quality management. Past articles, since 1995, are available online.

• Lean Journey
  "My Lean Journey started about 10 years ago with a career change from R&D to manufacturing. I started this Blog to share lessons along the way and chronicle 'My Lean Journey in the Quest for True North'. With so much emphasis on continuous improvement we often miss the true teaching of TPS (Thinking People System). Lean is a 'Learning' process so sharing your lessons and opinions are welcome."

• John Shook's Column by John Shook
  Articles by John, senior advisor at the Lean Enterprise Institute.

• How to implement Lean Thinking in a Business by Tracey Richardson
  Blog by a trainer for Toyota and consultant.

• Training Within Industry
  Blog on standardization, process improvement, training and lean manufacturing topics.

• Got Boondoggle by Mike Wroblewski
  "My lean experiences include learning directly from the original lean leaders including Dr. Shigeo Shingo. As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I believe quality is a cornerstone of all improvement actions. By sharing these experiences and insights, my hope is that you may benefit on your lean journey."

• Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter by John Hunter, William G. Hunter
  George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections by John Hunter
  The aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life. The site provides connections to resources on a wide variety of management topics to help managers improve the performance of their organization. The site was started in 1996 by John Hunter.

• Lean Simulations
  "The focus of this site is Lean training material, ready-to-use and free. I am searching the web for lean simulations, lean games, presentations, and real world examples. Please feel free to email me your material and I will link to it or post it."

• Lean Edge by Michael Ballé, H. Thomas Johnson, Daniel T. Jones, Art Smalley, Steven Spear, Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
  "Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners). ... The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."

• Free Lean
  Making 'lean thinking' concepts of continuous improvement highly accessible for practitioners. The site provides Operational Excellence planning sheets, audit forms, and data collection sheets for you to download and modify.