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Benefits And Challenges Of Lean Manufacturing

Strategy Driven

Lean thinking is all about doing more with less. Therefore, lean manufacturing is about reducing or eliminating waste across the board, from customer service and design to distribution and manufacturing. It is also commonly referred to as lean production. There are many benefits associated with lean manufacturing, as well as numerous challenges. The short-term and long-term benefits of lean manufacturing.

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Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

It involves replacing traditional mass manufacturing with “lean manufacturing” principles. Over the last thirty years, the lean approach — developed by Japanese automakers — has permeated the manufacturing sector in developed countries, but is much less commonly used in the developing world. Traditional mass manufacturing is based on principles of “Scientific Management” that date back to the 19th century.

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It’s Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement

First Friday Book Synopsis

Bob's blog entries "lean manufacturing" ” Taiichi Ohno Chibagin Asset Management Customize how and where continuous improvement is applied Edgar McVoy Harvard Business Review blog HBR email alerts It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement Jon Katzenbach Kaizen Lowell Mellen Schaffer Consulting Shigeo Shingo Eiji Toyoda Simply Effective The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization Toyota Production System (TPS) Training Within Industry (TWI) programs in 1951

Ohno 75
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Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Ranking

Curious Cat

curiouscat.com blogs Carnival lean manufacturingI created a ranking of top management improvement blogs for fun. There is no way to objectively rate blogs by how worthy or valuable they are. I just wanted to create a listing that ranked blogs I thought were worth reading using a collection of metrics that I think have some merit (even if that merit is fairly limited).

Blog 50
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Toyota’s Management History

Deming Institute

Compared to the improvements being made at manufacturing sites, increases in the efficiency of management and administrative departments was lagging and the number of managers who had not experienced the Deming Prize screening was increasing, resulting in a rising sense of a need for improvement of the management skills of department and section managers. And some people still today think of these ideas as limited to manufacturing operations.

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Comparing Lean Thinking and Dr. Deming’s Management Ideas

Deming Institute

This webcast shows Sarah Pavelka ’s presentation, Deming and Lean: The Disparities and Similarities, at the 2012 Annual Deming Conference. Sarah co-authored Tool Time for Lean with David Langford. Taking care to pay attention to what they want changed both shows an understanding of psychology (“respect for people” in lean terms) and is likely to unearth some fairly easy improvements to start with.

Deming 36
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Break the Cycle

Deming Institute

Dr. Deming management systems systems thinking Uncategorized continual improvement culture lean manufacturing management system organization as a systemPost by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. Ru ssell Ackoff had a profound capacity for using stories to educate his audiences about the basic concepts of managing systems, both in his lectures and in his books. He also had a profound way with words.

Ohno 28
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Book Review: Scaling Up Excellence

Engaging Leader

Or, if you have a key practice or mindset — for example, lean manufacturing — how do you […]. If you’ve created a great little coffeeshop, how do you expand and put your coffeeshops in cities around the world without watering down what makes your coffeeshop great? That’s a question that Starbucks certainly struggled to answer. The post Book Review: Scaling Up Excellence appeared first on Engaging Leader. Blog Book review

Review 140
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Cut The Inefficiencies Out Of Your Manufacturing Line

Strategy Driven

One industry that’s showing that in spades is manufacturing. It makes sense that better organization makes it easier for manufacturers to do things more efficiently. Lean manufacturing is down to the process of cutting waste out in all the different sectors.

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Five Reasons Job Seekers Should Study Lean Management

Lead Change Blog

Management job seekers with lean management experience can separate themselves from the competition. Those who study lean management demonstrate to employers an understanding of the forces of the global economy, as well as the requisite lifelong learning for business success. Here are five reasons: Companies Invest in Lean Management, Creating Lean-Related Jobs. Lean Allows Managers to Consider Accepting a Position with a Failing Company.

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084: Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less | with Bob Sutton

Engaging Leader

Or, if you have a key practice or mindset — for example, lean manufacturing — how do you […]. Or, if you have a key practice or mindset -- for example, lean manufacturing -- how do you spread it throughout your organization? If you’ve created a great little coffeeshop, how do you expand and put your coffeeshops in cities around the world without watering down what makes your coffeeshop great?

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Fighting The Good Startup Fight (Without a Unicorn In Sight)

Terry Starbucker

” I’ve also been to Kjell’s shop on several occasions, and have seen the values in action, along with a really cool example of how lean manufacturing works. Kjell van Zoen and his wife, Kim. Kjell van Zoen isn’t looking for unicorns. The founder and CEO of Portland company Plywerk , Kjell has been fighting the good startup fight for nearly 8 years, handcrafting beautiful wood photo displays with his crew in a warehouse on the east side of the city.

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3 Tools for Streamlining Processes in Manufacturing

Strategy Driven

Manufacturing processes are complex and they often consist of multiple steps. If your manufacturing processes are inefficient, then there are a few things you can do to improve them, including getting rid of obsolete steps and improving the communication between your employees.

Tools 90
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The Difference is the Point of Interaction

Mike Cardus

The image on the right reflects the ‘ Cascade-of-Planning ’ model or in Lean Manufacturing the Hoshin Kanri used in the Toyota Production System. Every employee is entitled to have a competent manager with the capability to bring value to their problem solving and decision making. Contact Mike make your team and leaders better. Click on the image to enlarge.

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5 Ways to Retain Employees with Lean Management Practices

Chart Your Course

The concept of lean management derives from the manufacturing industry, where the focus is on the outflow of products rather than the waste that comes with it. In recent years, however, lean management has been expanded to include non-manufacturing functions , including human resources. Here’s a bit more about how lean workforce optimization uses these principles to keep employees happy, while delivery stays at a maximum. Other Lessons From Manufacturing.

Course 113
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Quality is Job #1

Six Disciplines

manufacturing and Japanese imports. Some of the more prominent approaches include Total Quality Management, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program, Six Sigma, ISO-9000, and Lean Manufacturing. Long before we heard the phrase “Quality is Job #1,” various movements initiated the concept of systematically improving product quality. Dr. W.

Quality 91
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6 Ways Leaders Can Dial up the Level of Value in the Workplace

Michael Lee Stallard

It also grew when manufacturers worldwide began to adopt the Lean Manufacturing practices of Japanese companies, replacing the overspecialized, assembly-line mentality with teams that developed broader knowledge and skills and had greater autonomy. Adding elements to a workplace that enhance people’s value effectively empower people to achieve their potential. Here are six ways leaders can do this. Make a human connection with as many people as possible.

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Quality is Job #1

Six Disciplines

manufacturing and Japanese imports. Some of the more prominent approaches include Total Quality Management, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program, Six Sigma, ISO-9000, and Lean Manufacturing. Long before we heard the phrase “Quality is Job #1,” various movements initiated the concept of systematically improving product quality. Dr. W.

Quality 78
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Improving Your Team’s Lean Project Management

Strategy Driven

At its core, lean project management is about delivering greater value while minimizing waste. If your goal is to improve your team’s lean project management, resulting in greater efficiency and productivity, you need to take a number of key steps. Implement Lean Six Sigma (DMEDI).

Project 78
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Radio Show: Transform Performance From Worst to First

Change Starts Here

Today’s guest is Amir Ghannad, Director, Atlanta Plant and North America Lean Manufacturing/Workplace Excellence at Sunny Delight Beverages Co., who shares the story of how he and his team transformed the performance of the company’s Atlanta Plant. In 2006, the Sunny Delight Plant in Atlanta was overwhelmed by an increased level of complexity and a clear lack of trust and confidence in leadership. Results and morale were at an all time low.

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Using smart goals and data-driven assessment

Lead on Purpose

She is a firm believer of Lean Manufacturing principles and lives for standardized processes. Smart goals and data-driven assessment help employees and managers map career advancement – Guest post by Danielle M. Employees may start angling for a merit increase after a certain amount of time on the job, but discussions about advancement can get uncomfortable — and frustrating — if metrics are left out of the equation.

Goal 150
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Competitive Advantage from the Bottom of the Pyramid

LDRLB

Sponsoring local football events, utilizing tax incentives and setting up local manufacturing plants on subsidized government land has brought about brand ownership with locals. LG & Sevamob have both managed to achieve that via a combination of novel business models and in LG’s case low cost & lean manufacturing. [Editor''s Note: This is a guest post from Ajay Swamy.

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How to measure the ROI of your process improvement

Chartered Management Institute

Despite this, many companies undertaking lean manufacturing do not measure the effectiveness of their efforts on improving the bottom line. One thing that we feel is the benefit of lean and Six Sigma is actually the return on investment in these programs,” he said. As with any major change program, measuring the Return on Investment of your process improvement efforts is key for convincing internal stakeholders that what you are doing is worthwhile.

ROI 81
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The Failure of “The Livonia Philosophy” at my GM Plant

Deming Institute

General Motors wasn’t my ideal workplace after having read Deming’s Out of the Crisis and learning a bit about Lean manufacturing in college. That sounds very much like the Toyota Production System and Lean management. The Livonia Philosophy (as written, not practiced) also sounds like Lean in the goal of utilizing of all people’s skill and creativity, as we practice in the Kaizen model. respect for people career case study culture guest post hiring manufacturing

Deming 29
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Why People Lose Motivation — and What Managers Can Do to Help

Harvard Business Review

For example, employees in a white-goods manufacturing plant in Italy learned about lean manufacturing by playing with Legos rather than cooktops. In two weeks, the production team made lean manufacturing their own, reducing internal defects by 30% and improving productivity by 25%. Brandon Lyon/Getty Images. At some point, every leader has dealt with a person — or, worse, a group of people — who has lost motivation.

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How to Break Free from Email Jail

Harvard Business Review

A lesson from lean manufacturing. One of the critical steps in lean manufacturing (or bringing lean to any other process, for that matter) is shifting to a "pull" system. In a lean system, raw materials and work-in-process inventory are "pulled" from the preceding step only when they're needed by the downstream step, rather than being "pushed" onto the downstream step when the previous operation is complete.

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We Need a Better Language for Organizational Relationships

Harvard Business Review

But just as we need to know whether the evening we are about to spend is with our mother-in-law or a university buddy, managers inside organizations need to know whether the meeting they are about to have with a manufacturing expert is with an internal supplier, a team member, or a lobbyist for lean manufacturing. The unit may be lobbying for lean manufacturing techniques or special attention to a global customer.

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Collaboration Will Drive the Next Wave of Productivity Gains

Harvard Business Review

The ways individual companies achieve these straightforward goals fall in two basic categories: developing and adopting new management practices (such as total quality management, lean manufacturing, reengineering, and employee engagement), or adopting new technology and integrating it into the way work is done. Increasing productivity — making more with less — is at the core of any company or any economy's economic progress.

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Calling for a More Efficient Way of Communicating

Harvard Business Review

As the lean manufacturing folks will tell you, eliminating rework and redundancies while streamlining the information sharing is central to agile communications. [For more, visit the Communication Insight Center.]. A busy executive — aren't they all? — crafted an excellent email response to an important query posed by her subordinate. Thoughtful, useful, and personal, her answer cut to the heart of the issue while presenting an effective approach for managing it.

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How Chief Data Officers Can Get Their Companies to Collect Clean Data

Harvard Business Review

A large durable goods manufacturer wanted to quantify the value of the IT portfolio to its product development function. Using concepts from lean manufacturing, it modeled the time engineers spent creating and transforming data. The same manufacturer analyzed the historical performance of its large IT projects. In analytics, nothing matters more than data quality. The practical way to control data quality is to do it at the point where the data is created.

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Three Things Your Company Can Learn from a Bottle of Water

Harvard Business Review

Before closing any deal, Danaher's top executives visit the target company's plants to check the cost-saving potential of Danaher's proprietary lean tools. As a manufacturing company grows, it benefits from economies of scale and can focus teams of people on extracting the maximum productivity from its plant operations. To avoid this trap, the best service companies have routines that allow their people to benefit from the same sort of 'experience curves' as manufacturing workers.

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Employee Suggestion Schemes Don’t Have to Be Exercises in Futility

Harvard Business Review

For instance, I am currently conducting research with a small software company in Austin, KaiNexus , which draws on the continuous improvement and lean manufacturing philosophies to help clients implement upwards of 75% of the ideas they collect within local teams and departments. HBR STAFF. Here’s the irony of moving up in most organizations: You have more power to make changes but less visibility into what should change.

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Diet and Exercise Tips from Process Fitness Fanatics

Harvard Business Review

The stories of how they have kept their processes fit are less well known than those of famous process fitness fanatics such as Toyota, with its Toyota Production System (also known as Lean), and GE, with its Six Sigma program. Danaher, the $10 billion conglomerate of 600 manufacturing companies, got serious about process improvement after the surprising turnaround of a subsidiary in the mid-1990s. He is currently conducting research with the Lean Enterprise Institute.

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Delivering Your Innovative Ideas

Harvard Business Review

The best lean manufacturing , agile programming , and kaizen workshops I've attended almost always reflect this translational sensibility: the trainers/facilitators move as efficaciously as possible to get their charges to collaborate with and educate each other. The most valuable consulting lesson I ever received from a client came from being rewritten with neither my knowledge nor input.

Kaizen 15
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When Your Best Customers Really Aren't

Harvard Business Review

Toyota made its quality reputation sending its lean manufacturing experts into its suppliers' production lines to advise them on product design and process improvement. After an intense innovation workshop, the CTO of a globally-successful Chinese electronics supplier approached, unhappily. You emphasize the importance of collaborating with your customers to innovate," he moaned, "but our best customers don't want to collaborate.

CTO 15
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Go to Where the Actual Work Is Being Done

Harvard Business Review

Leader standard work is a term often used in lean manufacturing. Do you often feel reactive instead of proactive? Do people complain that decisions at the top take too long to percolate down to the frontlines? If so, you probably manage your organization and your direct reports through weekly meetings and email. You should instead consider “ leader standard work.”. However, it needn’t be confined to the factory floor — it’s equally valuable anywhere in the organization.

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The Dirty Little Secret About Digitally Transforming Operations

Harvard Business Review

Earlier this year, we walked the halls of the Hannover Messe, one of Europe’s largest events for industrial manufacturers. the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Manufacturing, and big data and advanced analytics. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, lean manufacturing was the Big New Idea and it seemed like everyone was learning new tools with Japanese names.

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Bringing Gender Balance to Nestle Italy

Harvard Business Review

The company was also trying to integrate the principles of lean manufacturing into its working styles, and Agostini found that changing the gender balance was a key lever in changing behaviors more generally. More in my series on showing how the gender balancing program at Nestle , on which I have been working with them, has gone down well even in the more macho countries in which the company operates. This time I'm looking at Italy.

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How We Revolutionized Our Emergency Department

Harvard Business Review

If it were a Toyota vehicle-manufacturing plant, a key enabler would be a rope strung along each production line above team members, the Andon Cord. We enlisted experts in operational effectiveness and service excellence, and both leaders and front line staff were trained on the principles of lean manufacturing. Initially described by John Krafcik at MIT in the late 1980s, lean principles build upon the quality improvement processes of the Toyota Production System (TPS).

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Breaking the Death Grip of Legacy Technologies

Harvard Business Review

Technologies like 3-D printing, robotics, advanced motion controls, and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold great potential for improving how companies design and build products to better serve customers. automakers took decades to adopt lean production methods despite the obvious benefits from increased productivity and lower work-in-process inventory. NUMMI) in California, did not deploy lean manufacturing across the company for decades despite the clear advantages.

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An Obstacle to Patient-Centered Care: Poor Supply Systems

Harvard Business Review

Principles from lean manufacturing can increase the effectiveness of individual work routines as well as coordination of work across departmental boundaries. It is widely acknowledged that patients and their families should be deeply involved in the design of and decisions about the health care that the former receive — and that it is integral to achieving high quality and patient satisfaction. But delivering such “patient-centered care” has proven challenging.