Productive Change: Peacefulness, Stress or Tension?

Productive Change: Peacefulness, Stress or Tension?

Most of us are confronted with this question: how to create productive change? We all face the same difficulties in getting teams and organizations to another level of performance using sometimes fundamentally different principles. Developing and communicating an enticing vision surely helps, but a certain sense of urgency is always required. But here I notice that it is often difficult to strike the right balance. In some cases, plants and teams are confronted with sheer impossible objectives, resulting in continuously being in the “red area”. In other situations, I see that we don’t create a challenging enough environment for teams to become productive. Management “cushions” the team and each time they are confronted with difficulties, padding is added in the form of capacity, lead-time, surface, tolerances, safety stock and others just to make sure the team looks good and can continue to work in peace. So how to strike the right balance?
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May 17, 2017 0

Predictive Maintenance: Air Bubble or Golden Egg?

Predictive Maintenance: Air Bubble or Golden Egg?

Predictive or condition-based maintenance (CBM) promises us the moon. By monitoring certain conditions (such as vibration, temperature and the quality of lubricants) we presumably can predict forthcoming equipment problems and prevent these from happening. Predictive maintenance would also lower the overall maintenance cost as it reduces the need for regular, preventative maintenance. Consequently, it would also increase the availability of the equipment. What more could we ask for?

Expensive, I hear you say? Impossible? If we may believe all gurus, the IoT and Big Data will be the answer to all of it. And at relatively low cost too. Well, get to it, then. (more…)

February 27, 2017 3

Four Reasons to Dislike OEE

Four Reasons to Dislike OEE

Most of my readers probably heard about the machine effectiveness measure of OEE, short for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a composite measurement of the effectiveness of a piece of equipment, composed of three elements, i.e., availability, performance and quality. And I regularly see this indicator on the shop floor, posted near or on multiple machines. But when I try to engage a shop floor discussion on its actual use in improving operations, I am often disappointed. A blog post on four reasons why I dislike OEE for shop floor control and improvement.
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January 16, 2017 12

Problem Detection: If Only Parts Could Talk

Problem Detection: If Only Parts Could Talk

I often hear that it’s far more challenging to develop Lean thinking in a service environment than it is in a manufacturing environment. Particularly where it is a person, and not a part, that journeys through the process. “People are not cars”, is an often-heard argument against the use of Lean principles in such service environments. The funny thing is that, to drive the point of problem detection home in manufacturing, I exactly compare manufacturing to service and healthcare processes and why, in fact, manufacturing may suffer a serious disadvantage, namely, parts don’t talk!
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November 29, 2016 0

Lean Equipment: Five Considerations for a Monument-Free Factory

Lean Equipment: Five Considerations for a Monument-Free Factory

Within the context of Lean thinking, quite a lot of attention is given to the proper and smart maintenance of equipment and installations; and for a good reason. Poor maintenance, typically resulting in unplanned down-time, rejects and loss of speed, is still an important cause of poor delivery reliability towards customers. And as a result, indirectly, it may also well be the reason behind high inventory levels and excessive overhead cost to still try being on-time.

Total Productive Maintenance or TPM, therefore, also is a well-known theme among capital-intense (semi-)process industries like for instance chemicals, plastics, metals, energy, paper, food and fast-moving consumer goods. And in more and more cases, TPM (either independently or as a part of Lean) is already well under way. But in this post, I don’t want to focus too much on the phase the equipment is already in operation, but rather before we even install the equipment, viz., the design, choice and purchase of the equipment. If we don’t, lots of problems may later arise because of a lack of Lean thinking in the design and purchasing process of equipment. Time for a change therefore; time to move towards Lean equipment and a monument-free future! (more…)

November 12, 2016 1

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM): What’s New?

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM): What’s New?

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is touted as the answer to Lean for hi-mix, lo-volume environments typically encountered in SMEs like job shops or machine builders. Personally, after having read the book and some papers about QRM, I got interested in QRM for the management of make-to-order products along make-to-stock fast movers, typically managed with the more traditional, anonymous or product-specific kanban (see also an earlier post on pull upstream and downstream op the order penetration point). So when Rajan Suri, Mr. QRM himself, was in the Netherlands last week, I took the opportunity and enrolled in a two-day workshop on QRM with him. Expectations were high, but although QRM does propose some interesting tools, overall it was somewhat disappointing. A post on what to expect and what not to expect from QRM. (more…)

October 28, 2016 1

Pitfalls in Measuring Delivery Reliability

Pitfalls in Measuring Delivery Reliability

Delivery reliability; there hardly is a company that is not measuring this in one way or another. After all, we all want and need to be customer-oriented, right? Measuring our delivery reliability should enable us to check the achievement of our objectives and taking the proper improvement actions if required.

But this does mean that our measurement should be done thoughtfully. It should represent what we want to achieve and lead to the right, relevant actions. Unfortunately, we don’t often even exactly know what it is what we measure let alone whether this reflects well what our customer is expecting from us. Our measurement may even lead to totally undesirable behavior if we don’t watch out. (more…)

September 27, 2016 1

Lean Certification: A Fool’s Bargain

Lean Certification: A Fool’s Bargain

You just became the proud owner of the title “Lean (Six Sigma) Black Belt” (or any other color for that matter)? Congratulations! But what, in fact, does this exactly mean? In any case, it means you invest in yourself or the organization you work for invests in its people. Good for you. But a lot of side notes can be made about the recent, totally uncontrolled proliferation in belt colors, titles, certificates and certifying organizations related to Lean and/or Six Sigma. Does such type of Lean certification actually imply a certain competence, or is it a fool’s bargain? (more…)

September 13, 2016 2

Get Rid of the Suggestion Box

Get Rid of the Suggestion Box

Some time ago, 3M was in the news about the way they used “social networking” internally to generate new ideas. This electronic suggestion box generated an “impressive” 700 suggestions in only 2 weeks, according to news site cio.com. And of course, every suggestion is welcome, but I’d like to put the 3M efforts in a somewhat larger perspective. Then 700 ideas in 2 weeks means about 18,200 ideas per year. Now 3M has some 75,000 employees, so this implies 0.24 ideas per employee per year. So do we still think this is impressive? Furthermore, cio.com mentioned that the ideas were submitted by some 1,200 employees, so by 1.6% of all employees. Cio.com published the article to illustrate a “best practice” in employee involvement. Honestly, I’m not very impressed. Are you? (more…)

August 30, 2016 0

Creating Ownership: Six Forms of Autonomy

Creating Ownership: Six Forms of Autonomy

Tell me, does it make a difference in how you treat your car depending upon whether it is a company car or your own? And what about homes: is there a difference in maintenance between rented homes and owned ones? A 2013 study, conducted in the Netherlands by Platform31 based upon the national registration of the quality of the Dutch housing stock (the KWR), concluded that only 8% of owner-occupied properties could be said to be in a poor state of maintenance whereas this number was 21% in the case of rental properties. Ownership seems to be an important factor in how much we care and invest in our work. So how do I create ownership in my organization? And how can the concept of autonomy in Lean help? (more…)

July 26, 2016 0

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