Documenting and Sharing Improvements and Lessons Learnt
Our continuous improvements are often hard fought and hard won, so we want them to be sustained and shared. Documenting and sharing our lessons learnt are an important part of all continuous improvement cycles. This was highlighted to Michelle Brown, TXM Consultant, during a recent project of introducing problem solving to a team of manufacturing people, and here she picks up her story.
Overcoming Reluctance When Implementing Lean Systems
Lean systems in many instances are implemented when company are faced with a challenge and have identified that new ways of doing business are required. The transition away from old habits to new ways of thinking can create a wall of reluctance within your work teams if not done correctly when faced with this type of situation.
Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking with 5S and Lean
Here are three Lean tools that can help our team act their way to a new way of thinking, acting “as if” they have already achieved their improvement goals, and become a world class organisation.
A Multi Level Approach to Problem Solving with Trigger Points
As you and your company travel along the lean journey, the ability for your team to identify and take part in solving their own problems becomes important. Having a robust, multi level approach to problem solving helps to make problem solving more achievable. Clear trigger points are needed to support the problem solving efforts.
Why Businesses Fail to Deliver On Time In Full for Customers
Many of the distribution businesses I see suffer from the same problems – frequent stock shortages on key items, while at the same time excessive stock holdings and obsolete stocks. This sounds like a contradiction, high levels of stock and frequent shortages. Businesses have too much of the things they don’t sell and too little of the things they sell. In this blog I am going to overview some of the root causes of these problems and then in the following monthly blogs I am going to suggest solutions.
Henry Technologies: the Lean Warehouse
How do you implement Lean in a Warehouse? This case study video explains how Lean warehouse processes were implemented at refrigeration components distributor, Henry Technologies delivering improved safety, productivity, accuracy and on-time delivery.
Potential Stumbling Blocks When Creating a Value Stream Map
Understanding your company’s “Value Stream” is an important part of your Lean Manufacturing journey, regardless of what type of products you are making or services you are offering. Today we will look at stumbling blocks when using the Value Stream Mapping approach in your business.
Address Old Problems with The Six Big Losses in Manufacturing
The Six Big Losses examine efficiency problems and is a framework about having fewer defects, stoppages and breakdowns.
TXM Lean Case Study – Olex Cables Lean Sales Office
Lean is famous for the results it delivers on the factory floor, but the Lean approach can deliver equal results in the office. In this Lean case study TXM Director, Tim McLean interviews Nexans Olex Cables Australia Sales Manager, Brendan King, about the success of the Lean Sales Office project at Nexans Olex Cables.
Justin Tao Keynote Speaker at Lean Summit in Sri Lanka
Justin Tao, TXM Lean Solutions China Consulting Director, was keynote speaker and workshop presenter at the Lean Transformation Summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the first of its kind to be held in this emerging economy.
The Top 7 Tips for Effective Professional Development
So how are companies like Boeing and Toyota enable to find leaders who can lead the various parts of their business in a consistent way? The answer is that these companies consciously work to develop leaders at all levels of their business. They pride themselves on offering a career path for employees from graduation to the C-suite.
Developing Innovation Through Culture
Developing innovation needs the right company culture. Here we look at how we can improve our culture to create the innovation that is needed for us to be competitive, including the approaches and consideration to help us along the way.
TXM Lean Minute – Live and Visual Minute Taking
Maximise the productivity of your meetings with live and visual minute taking. TXM Consulting Director Anthony Clyne explains how you can save time, have shorter meetings and better results with live and visual minute taking.
Seven Standards for Successful Leadership of Temporary Employees
In many industries, temporary employees provide an important and flexible element of the workforce. Many businesses seem to forget that temporary employees are people and that they also require good leadership.
How Can HR Help You With Developing Your Lean Leaders ?
Lean manufacturing is about developing people. This belief was reinforced last Friday at the Best Practice Network’s workshop – ‘Strategies and Insights for Developing Your Lean Leaders’. Held at Leica Biosystems Melbourne, the workshop was facilitated by Cheryl Jekiel, founder of the ‘Lean Leadership Resource Center.’
TXM Lean Case Study – ATCO Structures and Logistics
Applying Lean principles right from the start of a new facility maximises the benefits. In this case study video, the TXM team worked with ATCO Structures and Logistics to ensure that their new Perth facility was Lean from day one. This lead to dramatic savings in capital costs for the facility as well as lower operating costs and shorter lead times.
TXM Lean Minute Video – Using Short Interval Control for Planning
Short interval control production boards are a key tool to stabilizing and sustaining our lean processes within a machine or workstation area. This Lean minute explains how Short Interval Control production boards provide the information needed for the team to make the correct decision about order and sequence of production in real time every day.
Benchmarking the Lean principles at Subway
A great place to see key lean principles is at your local Subway; their layout and processes exemplify many of the lean principles we are looking to develop in your company. They include clearly defining customer expectations, defining product flow and being agile with customer demands.
TXM Lean Minute – Bring the Pace of the Customer in your Business with a Pacemaker
Bring the Pace of your customer in to your business with a Lean Pacemaker. Learn the five steps to establishing a pacemaker to control your process.
The “Maslow’s Hierarchy” of Continuous Improvement
Companies that are just beginning their lean journey will often talk about the company culture they would like to instil into their organisation. For some companies this dream is going to take more work and time than with others. Today we will look at the “Maslow’s Hierarchy” of Continuous Improvement that is needed to create a lean culture where continuous improvement and innovation are part of the fabric of the company.
Lead Metrics and Lag Metrics for Visual Controls
Metrics are a key ingredient for improved communication in a visual Lean workplace and are essential for good Lean Daily Leadership. It’s also important to review your metrics to make sure they are still supporting your goals. Here we will look into different types of metrics that may be suitable to support you, and discuss the importance of understanding which metrics are leading and which are lagging, and how to determine a balance between the two types of metrics.
Understanding Waste, Unevenness and Overburden – Muda, Mura and Muri
The definition of Lean is to reduce wastes. Here we will look at the THREE types of wastes the may occur in a process. We will explore the “7 wastes” of Muda and update our understanding of the other two, lesser know wastes Mura – the waste of unevenness, and Muri – the waste of overburden. These two wastes are often overlooked at we journey along the Lean path.
TXM Lean Minute – How Creating Flow Helps You See and Solve Problems in Lean Production
Learn how creating flow in your business is like creating good traffic flow. When the flow stops it shows that something non-standard has happened and prompts you to solve problems. Learn why flow is so important in Lean Production.
TXM Lean Minute – Driving Business Performance with Effective Visual Management
If takt time is the heart of lean production, visual management represents the nervous system in Lean management. Visual management is an indispensable tool when we implement Lean. It helps the other lean tools become more powerful by making their impact on the business visual. In this Lean Minute video, TXM China Consulting Director, Justin Tao, explains how to design and effective Visual Management Board.
Improving Our Work with a Quality Mindset
It is possible to build a Quality Mindset into everything we do. We need to consider the fundamental points of customer requirements, understand what a quality approach means to our business, map our processes, utilising the available tools and committing to fixing our quality as soon as an error is found.
TXM Lean Minute – Making Lean Work In a Jobbing Shop
TXM Lean Minute – Making Lean Work In a Jobbing Shop Lean manufacturing was developed originally for assembly lines in the automotive industry. It certainly works well in mass production, however what about a jobbing shop? How do you make Lean work in a jobbing shop? Our latest lean minute video gives you some practical …
Top 4 Tips to Improve your Chinese Supplier’s Competitiveness!
Top 4 Tips to Improve your Chinese Supplier’s Competitiveness! China is getting expensive. Very few companies sourcing from China will have failed to notice the changes over the past few years. In the last decade, factory labour costs have more than tripled and the Chinese exchange rate has risen by around 50% against major western …
Three Critical Elements of Coaching
When we begin our Lean Journey, the stage is set during the initial workshops to establish our current state, create our proposed future state and develop a plan to get us from here to there. During the implementation of the plan, we follow up between workshop with coaching and support for the individuals involved. Here we will look at the critical elements of coaching to ensure we get the best out of people during our lean implementation. This coaching may occur between both the TXM Facilitator and key people within your business, as well as between your Lean Champion and team members. It becomes a “coaching the coach” opportunity.
TXM Lean Minute – Display your Value Stream Maps in the Workplace
Displaying your current state value stream map near to the place where the work is done can unearth ideas and opportunities. Anthony Clyne explains in this TXM Lean Minute video how displaying your value stream map near where the work is actually done can lead to a better result for your business.
Don’t Understand Japanese Lean Jargon? Don’t Worry!
Have you noticed how many Lean consultants and speakers love to spice their language with Japanese words. Words like “Kanban” and “Kaizen” have almost entered the English language, but what about “nemawashi”, “hansei”, “yokoten” and “kaikaku”? What do these terms mean and does it really matter?
TXM Lean Minute – Why Small and Medium Sized Businesses Need to Implement Lean To Grow
Why do some small and medium sized manufacturers grow in to big businesses, while most stay small? Lean author Tim Mclean shares insights from his book “Grow your Factory, Grow Your Profits” about what holds back so many small and medium sized businesses and how Lean can be the key to unlocking their growth potential.
Improvement Ideas Scoring with a PICK Chart
There is nothing more exciting than gathering a group of people together to discuss improvement ideas, especially in a company that is maturing through the Lean Journey and team engagement is spreading. One of the challenges often faced by TXM clients early on is how we decide on the “right” improvement ideas to focus on? We have found using a PICK chart is a great way to encourage team discussion and provide timely feedback.
TXM Lean Minute – Lean Problem Solving – Breaking Down the Problem
Daily problem solving is at the heart of continuous improvement. We often find companies struggling by making problem solving harder than it needs to be. In this Lean Minute video Michelle Brown explains the importance of defining the problem and breaking it down in to smaller clearly defined elements that we can address one by one.
TXM Lean Minute – Why Quality Control Inspection is Waste You Should Eliminate
Does quality inspection add value to your product? The answer is “NO”, all inspection is waste and as such should be eliminated. But how do you reduce or eliminate inspection and at the same time improve the quality of the product your customers receive. This Lean Minute Video will show you how to get started on reducing inspection.
Five Reasons You Spend Your Day Firefighting and Expediting Orders – and What to Do About It
Do you find that much of your day “firefighting” to expedite orders in a vain attempt to ensure your customers get what they need on time and in full? Despite your best efforts, are you constantly frustrated by the failure of your business to follow its plans, have materials and inventory where it is needed, when it is needed and the frequency at which things simply go wrong? Learn why this happens and what to do about it in our latest blog.
TXM Lean Minute – The Five Steps to Achieving Level Production (Heijunka)
Achieving level production is a key objective of a Lean production system. Level production occurs when each process step works in unison at a constant rate of production equal to rate of customer demand or takt time. But how do you achieve level production? In our latest Lean Minute video TXM Senior Consultant, Greg Boek provides five simple steps to get you there.
Getting the Right Resources for a Successful Lean Project
How do you resource a successful Lean transformation. There are lots of different approaches and different types of Lean resources available, but what is the most effective approach. In this blog, TXM Managing Director discusses the pros and cons of the various approaches to lean resources and recommends some practical solutions.
TXM Lean Minute – Daily Standup Meetings Are Not Just for the Factory
Many businesses have found that having quick daily stand up meetings around a visual management board is an excellent way to engage shop floor teams in improving business performance. In this Lean Minute video, Michelle Brown explains how daily “stand up” meetings and visual management boards can be just as valuable for office teams as they are in the factory, warehouse or workshop.
What is Industry 4.0 – Something New or Just “Ground Hog Day”?
If you listen to the business media there is a revolution coming to manufacturing. It is called Industry 4.0, a fourth industrial revolution based on emerging technologies such as “the internet of things”, “big data”, advanced automation and additive technologies. So what is new and different about Industry 4.0, what does it change and what should you be doing about it?
TXM Lean Minute – Balancing Workflow for Level Production
Lean manufacturing aims for level production, where the throughput of each process step is balanced to match the rate of customer demand or takt time. Level production enables businesses to dramatically reduce lead times and work in progress and increase productivity. In this lean minute video, Tim McLean explains how to balance processes and achieve level production in a machine shop.