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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 c…
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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 …
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Why Lean Business Processes Fail – Does your “Gate” Have No “Fence”?
We have all read the books, we all know the theory – Lean business processes are GREAT! They cut waste, cut lead times…
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Creating a Standard Lean Workstation: Low Volume – High Mix Industry
S & A Stairs craftsman work in a low volume, high mix industry. Designing a standard Lean workstation is the first steps…
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Top 3 TXM Lean Minute Videos
Our TXM Lean Minute videos have attracted attention from around the globe and we love bringing them to you! They are a f…
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Mastering Meaningful Metrics
“What gets measured, gets managed” is the adage by management expert Peter Drukker and you would be hard pressed to …
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Waste Elimination Culture: A Structured Way to Eliminate Waste
How do we approach Waste elimination in a manufacturing environment? Start by developing a structured process that is s…
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The Top Lean Tools for Maintenance
As we implemented and refined our Lean Enterprise Production System the stability of the processes becomes extremely imp…
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Lean Implementation Planning
Once the Lean direction and vision is set, the commitment has been communicated across the company and the deployment po…
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Conducting Audits to Sustain Lean
In the last two articles have discussed the importance of sustaining and implementing a Lean Production system has well …
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Lean Manufacturing Goes Hand In Hand with Quality Improvement
How do we use Lean Manufacturing methods improve quality systems? Over the years, while introducing Lean programs into m…
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Parts Quantity Analysis
If you are serious about your lean journey, you will need to jump into a Parts Quantity Analysis (PQA), also referred to…
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Making My Workplace More Visual
Making our work flows and daily metrics visible is a key to implementing lean and getting our team involved. We want to …
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When is “Future State”?
Lean boils down to where are we now? Where to we want to be? and How do we "close the gap"? While there are many tools t…
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Implementing a lean project
All businesses are under pressure at the moment. We're trying to do more with less people and as a result have less time…
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Advancing Office Productivity with 3 Lean Principles
The Lean principles are so often attached to the manufacturing of goods such as cars, white goods and furniture however …
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Growing time for Lean
We hear time and time (and time and time) again that people "Can't find time" for lean, every day is too busy with custo…
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Implementing Lean – When and How to Start?
A common question we are asked is when should a business start implementing lean and how should it get started. Many peo…
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What Personality Type is Best Suited to Problem Solving
Most of us, at some point in recent memory will have been subjected to a personality test. Most likely it will be the My…
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Reinvigorating Your Business
January is a funny month as we wind up work mode while the weather is still warming up outside and our thoughts are drif…
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Learning to Define the “Problem”
To improve our problem solving skills we need to begin by clearly defining the "problem". Those involved in the problem …
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Analytical Techniques for Lean Manufacturing
In apply Lean principles in order to improve we have to start with understand the current manufacturing landscape. Typic…
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Total Productive Maintenance is like Servicing the Company Car
Do you often face breakdowns on critical production machines? This condition leads to lengthy delays in production or ma…
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TXM Lean Manufacturing Tip – Couple Manufacturing processes
Traditional improvement programs focus on optimising individual pieces of equipment. Anyone with a new machine will unde…
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Managing Your Factory Workload with Level Production
One of the problems we see a lot in manufacturing and office processes, particularly make to order processes is the buil…
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5S and a Visual Workplace – Essential for Sustaining Lean Manufacturing
Many lean experts are critical of 5S and think it is a superficial tool. However while, 5S and Visual Workplace are not …
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Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a performance measure commonly used to monitor successful improvements to a pro…
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Andons – The Bright Lights of Lean
Andon is a term referring to a system that provides notification to management, maintenance, and other workers of a qua…
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Learning to use Manufacturing Visual Work Instructions
Visual Work instructions (VWIs) are a tool that transfer knowledge of standard work practises through the use of visual …
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Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement – Lessons from Elite Sport
Many companies that approach TXM tell us that they want to create a “culture of continuous improvement. Some people te…
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Implementing a Robust Lean Problem Solving Process
A key transition step from "implementing" Lean to it becoming a way of life is how we build problem solving into everyth…
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Point of use
What is Point of Use? Coming out of the many 5S techniques of Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardise and Sustain, is a…
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Using Fishbone Diagrams to Solve Problems
Fishbone diagrams may also be referred to as cause and effect diagrams, or Ishikawa diagrams, after their founder Kaoru …
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Getting Lean to stick
Getting Lean to stick and changing a company culture are BIG problems in many companies. If you aren't always improving,…
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Lean Production Preparation Process (3P)
Recently I visited an automotive electrical OEM to review their working supermarket for controlling work-in-process. As …
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Implementing Daily Problem Solving
A robust problem solving approach is the best method for tackling problems while implementing a Lean production system.…
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Eliminating Waste
In every manufacturing process, our aim is to add value to a product that the customer will pay for. While adding value …
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Quality in a Lean Manufacturing Organisation
Quality is still needed in every manufacturing environment and "Quality at source" is fundamental to a flowing productio…
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Takt Time
The concept of takt time is one of the trickiest concepts and calculations to grasp when designing a Lean Production sys…
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Top 5 Lean Foundation Tools
The TXM team visit many different manufacturing companies, from the food and pharmaceutical industries to machining and …
