Monthly Archives - February 2017

Am I really needed at the factory hall?

Some time ago, in one of the groups at LinkedIn I came across a discussion on the downfall of Lean initiatives. According to the entry, approx. 95% of companies are not able to implement, maintain, but first of all profit from this system, based on the Toyota Production System. These figures have been recently confirmed by Art Byrne in an interesting conversation with Paul Akres. He claimed that according to his personal calculations approx. 4% of Lean transformations are [...]

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Make your process (one piece) flow!

One piece flow is the basis of lean philosophy. Transition to working in this system provides you with an immediate performance boost of at least 20% (from my experience) and reduced manufacturing costs. It is almost like a magic spell, yet only available to those who are not afraid to solve problems and to be in gemba. In short, one piece flow is the opposite of batch production. In this system, the time when the product is not worked on/processed [...]

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My notLean shopping

My favorite definition of lean is the one applied by Paul Akers: ‘fix what bugs you.’ So little, yet so much. I often hear from the people I work with that the discovery of lean was the best and the worst  thing that has happened to them. They simply look differently at a lot of things surrounding them and… they get upset because they see how much waste there is around them. At 9 p.m. I decided to do some shopping [...]

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