Combining Lean Tools and Safety Standards for Improvements
The practice of providing a safe workplace and implementing Lean production systems have been kept separate in most manufacturing sites. It is not uncommon to find these two essential functions being slightly out of alignment due to their seemingly opposite objectives. There are three excellent lean tools that you can implement into processes to create a safer and incident-free workplace
How to Avoid the Senior Management Revolving Door in Your Business
The “management revolving door” is a disaster for your business. Apart from the direct recruitment and severance costs of hiring and firing manager after manager, the revolving door will stall your business’ progress and prevent you from growing successfully. Learn why the revolving door happens and how to stop it spinning.
TXM Lean Minute – How to Design Efficient Order Packing and Processing in your Lean Warehouse
TXM Lean Minute – How to Design Efficient Order Packing and Processing in your Lean Warehouse A critical step in any warehouse and a major source of errors and waste is the final step of checking, order packing and processing orders for shipment. In this Lean Minute Video, Michelle Brown explains how to design a …
Rosebank Engineering Consolidates its Operations in Melbourne with New Ultra Precision Machining Centre THE CHALLENGE Rosebank Engineering is an Australian-owned high technology small-to-medium enterprise that provides Defence with specialised services relating to fine mechanisms and precision hydraulics used in aircraft mechanical and structural components. The company relocated from an older facility in Port Melbourne to …
The Importance of the Senior Leadership Workshop
While holding a senior leadership workshop may feel like a huge burden of time and resources, at TXM we find the investment of time is hugely rewarded. We check the understanding of both teams with the project aims and objectives. We review the TXM process and check we have the key elements in place for a successful improvement project. And we highlight potential barriers to change before they become a major problem and slow down the improvement project.
Business Health Check: The Three Key Indicators For Your Daily Gemba Walk Around
Active leadership is important to continuous improvement and a daily walk around to determine the health of your business can be very beneficial. We considered the three key points for checking in on the health of your business with business equivalents of the heart rate, the blood pressure and the temperature of our factories.
TXM Lean Minute – The Data is in the Computer
Learn how to use data that is in the computer and talk about it every day in stand up meetings. The challenge is to understand the data, know what is says, know why, and share the discussion in the daily meeting. Just posting computer print outs on your visual board can reduce meeting effectiveness and value.
What Does Your China Supply Chain Cost You and How do You Improve it?
China is no longer the low cost manufacturing paradise it once was. However the problems of long lead times, dodgy suppliers and suspect quality still exists, even as Chinese manufacturing moves in to more complex and higher value added sectors. TXM China Consulting Director, Justin Tao has spent his whole career working in Chinese manufacturing from his first days in Toyota’s forging plant in Tianjin. Justin believes that the key to supply chain success in China is to get the right support – from a local.
Improve Buy In with a Visual Action Plan
We want to improve team buy in and take your action plan to the next level by making it visual. We’ll go into what is a visual action plan, with examples and why it’s important for team buy in while rolling out the plan to achieve your goals.
Developing an Action Plan for Real World Improvements
This article is to remind you of the importance of thinking through the creation of an action plan, making sure your plan is as good as it can be with the time and information you have at the time, and then GETTING IT DONE! And then remember to review and make changes as you need to, to achieve your goal.
TXM Lean Minute – How to Design your Lean Warehouse for Efficient Picking
A key cause of waste in a warehouse is excessive transportation and motion. Carefully designing your warehouse to minimise unnecessary motion and transport and provide the right type of storage for the right parts can maximise warehouse efficiency and improve safety.
TXM Lean Minute – How to Start a Visual Management Board
We all know visual management boards are an important part of a Lean Management System, but how do you start. This Lean Minute video provides some practical tips on how to get your visual management board started in a way that engages your people.
TXM Lean Minute – Using Lean Visual Controls in the Office
This Lean Minute focuses is on lean visual controls in the office, with a particular focus on how the work flows.The challenge is to achieve the customer satisfaction that is desired by the business leaders. In the office this is often to ensure that the work flow is visual.
TXM Lean Innovation Recognized at Kmart Supplier Awards
TXM Lean Solutions were delighted to be selected from over 200 suppliers as finalists for the Innovation Award at the Kmart Supplier of the Year Awards. These were presented at the Zinc Function Centre in Melbourne’s Federation Square last month.
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.
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.