OE Newsletters

Team Member Testimony Reveals the ‘Power’ in Empowerment

Numbers can help convince executives that employee involvement is worthwhile, but results don't tell the whole story.

DataCard Standardizes Development Process and Puts Structure in Place to Sustain the Change

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?

Titleist Foot-Joy Worldwide Drives Toward Visual Workplace

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?

MEMC Gets Quick, Cost-Effective Maintenance Improvements with CEDAC

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.

‘Semi-Stealth’ Strategy Turns Top Executives into Believers

You want to transform your company into a lean enterprise, but you don't have top management support. What do you do?

Good Team Chartering Means Better Results

"Team chartering" (often referred to as "project chartering")– what it is, why it is important and the elements that go into a great charter.

At Last – A CEO Who Walks the Quality Talk

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.

Making Empowerment Real:
Four Steps Managers Must Take

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.

Managers Have 3 Obligations in a Lean System

As a manager, Lean production obliges you to:

1. Be a good teacher;
2. Be a consensus builder;
3. Have a shop-floor focus...

Finding Capacity—A snapshot of a client engagement #24 OE Newsletter

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.

TPM Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities #23 OE Newsletter

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

Make it Visible… #22 OE Newsletter

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.

Writing a good problem statement #21 OE Newsletter

The unimpeachable problem statement points directly to the art of concise communication.

6 steps to achieving TPM through line-centric accountability #20 OE Newsletter

For businesses to fully implement goal-driven lean strategies through Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM), they need more than a simple toolbox of
everyday solutions.

Lean Rollout—Pull, Readiness, and Getting Started #19 OE Newsletter

The success of an organization’s lean strategy depends on thorough planning, a commitment to the process and engaged leadership. Lean […]

Gore’s ELIXIR® Strings: Gains Support Customer Service/Sales #18 OE Newsletter

To drive the Lean transformation in their organizations, mid-and top-level executives need to develop skills and experience in effectively applying Lean techniques, some do this by participating in the Lean Manager Certification Program (LMAC)…

Lean re-launch at TexOps: holistic, systematic—Approach yields dramatic performance gains #17 OE Newsletter

For successful lean transformation, a systematic, long-term commitment is crucial, according to Productivity Inc.’s managing partner Mike Kuta.

Lean Service Is Innovative Service Is Lean Service Is . . . #16 OE Newsletter

The hallmarks of service businesses include high levels of complexity, low levels of process and product visibility, and a dual reliance on people skills and technological prowess.