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This month’s From the Archives illustrates the powerful benefits of collaboratively involving customers in new product development and subsequent sharing of improvement ideas. Though not referenced by name, the article also reflects the Obeya approach to facilitated project management, as well as elements of 3P, EEM, and Maintenance Prevention Design.
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In this month's From the Archives,"Teams Motivate Employees to Improve Service, Cut Costs," Banc One Corporation shares their timeless story of how identifying and solving service problems allowed them to reduce rework and correct errors, which led to reduced costs, improved bottom line sustainability, and greater customer satisfaction.
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In this month's archive article, learn how auto supplier Amtex discovered the key to improving Lean manufacturing and business goals was to integrate TPM with existing CI activities, and get maintenance working with operators to turn problems into opportunities for improvement.
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Discover how Herman Miller employed elements of Business Model Innovation to successfully develop and introduce a new product to a market they hadn’t previously served.
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Numbers can help convince executives that employee involvement is worthwhile, but results don't tell the whole story.
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How do you get your professional people to change how they do things when they are used to an approach they think works fine and your company is clearly doing well?
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With lean manufacturing, how much difference can a handful of people make, armed with know-how, some adhesive tape, a laminating machine, and rolls of Velcro?
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Reduced downtime. Greater capacity. Increased yield. Higher revenues. According to Darrell Birks, maintenance supervisor at MEMC Electronic Materials (St. Peter's, MO), you can get all this quickly, simply and with minimal expense.
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You want to transform your company into a lean enterprise, but you don't have top management support. What do you do?
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"Team chartering" (often referred to as "project chartering")– what it is, why it is important and the elements that go into a great charter.
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Leadership is the first of “six commandments” underpinning a successful total-quality strategy. The other five: focusing on customer results, training all employees, recognizing employee participation, communicating quality throughout the organization, and providing appropriate quality measures and tools.
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Communicating clear goals is the first step managers must take to assure that empowerment works. Managers must also provide the skills to achieve the goals, time to work on improvement, and resources with which people can make changes.
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As a manager, Lean production obliges you to:
Applying lean thinking outside the manufacturing environment can bring big returns to your organization. Recently, we employed lean techniques to assist an organization with a major capital project—our mission, finding 30% more capacity within their existing facility. Here’s a snapshot of the engagement.
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Although there are still misconceptions, I am happy to see more and more organizations understand that TPM is not simply a maintenance department program, but an effort that encompasses the entire organization. What is still often overlooked, however, is that TPM is as much (if not more) of a social program
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Last month saw another round of graduates from our Lean Manager for Services Certification held on the campus of The Ohio State University. Instructor and Executive Partner of Productivity Inc., Catherine Converset, spent a few minutes with us recently to talk about implementing lean in service and administrative functions.
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The unimpeachable problem statement points directly to the art of concise communication.
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For businesses to fully implement goal-driven lean strategies through Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM), they need more than a simple toolbox of
everyday solutions.