Monthly Archives: "November 2011"

In 1950, while America was ranked first in gross national income (per capita), Japan was ranked 29th, with the average American earning at least seven times more than the average Japanese. In 2009, Japan was ranked third, behind Luxembourg and Switzerland, and America dropped to fifth, with the average Japanese earning over $2,000 more than

As I have been looking over my notes from the last few publications and improving our curriculum for our upcoming Japan trip experience, I came across a new, overlooked concept from our newly published book by Shigeo Shingo, Fundamental Principles of Lean Manufacturing. Shigeo Shingo called it the Coefficient of Layout Efficiency. It is a

Total Participation of Management —TPM— also known as Total Productive Maintenance. As with all aspects of Lean Thinking you cannot have the whole without looking after the parts. That is why TPM is not a solution but a methodology. Let me explain my understanding of TPM after years of traveling the globe observing different companies

A strong characteristic of World Class Management was revealed to us this week on our Japan Trip. TPM as a tool set was clearly explained to our group and I wanted to share this with you to provide some value and insight gained into our Lean Benchmarking Tour in Japan. A tier one supplier to

I thought that at the beginning of the year it would be appropriate to talk about the benefits and purpose of aligning your organization. I want to talk to you about going beyond Value Stream Mapping to what I call Value Stream Organization. In the last five years we have seen an increasingly greater number

All too often I read about the benefits of 5S in the workplace. In fact I do author training packages and books on the 5S’s. As the President of a publishing business and an author I believe it is necessary for me to discover the underlying meanings of different subject matter in order to provide

Create a Mechanism that Allows and Encourages the Sharing of 5S Implementation Know-How I was recently touring a fantastic factory in Japan called Richo Unitecho and was delighted to find an organization that has successfully implemented a complete collaboration of 5S Ideas. They did this by finding ways to integrated some of the known tools

In many Western publications I come across the virtues of the Toyota System and the intricacies and explanations of how the Toyota System works. One aspect that I run across many times is the use and explanation of Kanban. Recently, I have had the opportunity to spend some time with a wise author of Kanban

Just over a month ago, I found myself in Japan on a private Study Mission to Japan with 16 managers from a non-traditional company who were trying to implement Lean in an insurance and sales organization. At the beginning of the week I asked them, “Raise your hand if your organization is running workshops?” Every