Lean Articles Archives | Productivity

Lean Articles

Announcing Our New Brand Identity

Our mission is to "Keep your Enterprise in Motion": helping you stay on the move – improving, reinventing and innovating …

Productivity’s Senior Partner, Catherine Converset, to speak at the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) 2018 Conference October 29-November 1 in San Diego, CA

We are very excited to announce that Productivity’s Senior Partner, Catherine Converset, will speak at the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) 2018 International Conference, October 29-November 1 in San Diego, CA. Catherine will deliver a half-day workshop on Monday, October 29 on the subject of Lean in Service/Administrative Functions...

Productivity’s Senior Partner, Catherine Converset, to speak at the Iowa Lean Consortium Conference

Just Announced: Productivity’s Senior Partner, Catherine Converset, will speak at the fall 2018 Iowa Lean Consortium Conference.
The event, being held October 23-25 at the Sheraton West Des Moines, will bring together Lean leaders and practitioners eager to share perspectives on how they are using Lean methods to change their culture while striving for operational excellence. Catherine, will deliver a breakout session as well as a workshop, here is a quick summary of her session topics:

Lean Needs Leaders

Many of our recent posts have focused on leadership. We’re afraid we are beginning to sound like a broken record. […]

#10 White Paper If History Can Teach Us Anything... It's How to Lead

Q. What key activity continues to be undervalued when implementing improvement efforts?
A. Leadership.

#9 White Paper What’s Missing From Your Lean Initiative?

TPM’s integral role, with 5 takeaways to guide your strategy.
Most business owners and general managers recognize just how critically important proper equipment maintenance is, particularly in an asset-oriented work environment.

10 Steps to Foster Innovation and Drive Growth

Innovate or die is a favored phrase among forward thinkers, and though perhaps hackneyed, the notion is exactly in line with the needs of retail today.
As James Vatalaro, a business consultant with Productivity Inc., which practices improving on its namesake for companies in need, noted in his presentation on strategy innovation at the...

Managing Complexity at a Major Insurance Broker

This affinity insurance broker manages policies for 100+ global brands, with millions of new insurance contracts annually covering policyholders in 10+ countries. Its banking, telecommunications, manufacturing, and retail clients offer their...

5 Principles to Align Your Organization into Excellence

Lean initiatives must be aligned towards the same objectives, in order to avoid the "bubble effect": a lot of Kaizen events or Lean projects, engaging a lot of people in improvement activities that lack consistency and consequently have no impact on performance.

Blower Failure Case Study – Root Cause Machine Failure Analysis

The goal of Maintenance Improvement is to move away from reactive to a proactive or planned maintenance process. As part of this process, maintenance personnel analyze breakdowns to reveal equipment weaknesses and then modify equipment to improve its operation, maintainability and lengthen equipment life. Root Cause Machine Failure Analysis was introduced to this building products manufacturer’s maintenance reliability team as a method to eliminate a repetitive blower failure.