Why Do This ?
Jobs. For two decades, executive leadership in U.S. manufacturing companies have chosen to outsource manufacturing to low cost countries in a race to gain competitive…
Lean Mfg in Diversified Industrial Environments
To understand Lean Manufacturing, first read Ohno’s Toyota Production System, and May’s The Elegant Solution. Ohno describes a single, achievable goal – to shrink the…
ERP
Nearly 100% of U.S. manufacturing companies above 50 employees rely on a type of software called “ERP” – Enterprise Resource Planning – to manage their operations and…
Beyond ERP
The Millennial First World workforce is post-transactional. New college graduates are simply unwilling to harness themselves to keyboards and bang away for 8 hours a day keying data in or…
Three Keys to On Time Delivery
Nearly all manufacturing business leaders will state that one of their primary goals is to ship products to customers on time. However, in my experience the…
8 Disciplines
Most diversified industrial manufacturing businesses desire to be “Lean” in order to improve on-time performance, reduce cost and speed time-to-market. Lean Manufacturing refers to the Toyota Production…
SHAPE
In the world of manufacturing, we often search for “game-changers” – new products, capabilities, customers, talent that can propel the business forward. Conversely, we…
DMAIC
DMAIC is an acronym for “Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.” It is a structured problem solving method, part of the Six Sigma method developed at…
4DX
Focus on wildly important goals only, measure the things that lead you to your goals, keep a simple, timely scoreboard, and get together often…
Many Patterns
Pattern Recognition is the new front and center skill for industrial knowledge workers. A diversified industrial factory builds snowflakes. Each product may be the only…
SMART
Make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. See: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/use-smart-goals-to-launch-management-by-objectives-plan/
Tenkan
The change agent is always challenging the status quo, and encountering opposition. If a constituent says, “This won’t work,” or “We’ve tried this before…
2-2-2, WWW. How to Resolve Any Conflict
Two attempts, Two Media, Two Days – Then Escalate If you encounter a problem, and you are on good terms with the person who…
Making Movies
Running a change project in a diversified industrial manufacturing environment seems similar to making a movie. At the center of a movie is the director, who envisions…
Bibliography
The most influential source material for this blog: The definitive work and precursor to all books about “Lean”. If you want to…