Articles

Plan-Do-Check-Act is the key learning cycle that is at the foundation of lean thinking. But how do you make a good plan, and more specifically, how do you estimate how long the tasks in the plan will take?

If you have historical data, or you can accurately estimate the work content, the task of estimating task duration is very straightforward. But if you are doing something you have never done before, estimating the task duration can be very challenging.

Available time for changeovers per period (T_a∆), also called available time for (internal) set-ups, represents the time per a given period day, shift, week, etc. during which a machine, equipment, or resource (i.e., room) can be changed over from one product to another, prepared for a different medical procedure, cleaned for another customer, etc. T_a∆, is foundational to every part every interval (EPEI), changeover distribution, and kanban sizing calculations.

I remember, years ago, watching my oldest child struggle in his attempt to loosen a bolt. This was one of those all too few, brief, and shining child-rearing moments where I could easily and quickly share some trusty words of wisdom. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey.” I’m pretty sure that my son’s response was somewhere in the vicinity of, “Huh?” Not the effect that I was looking for necessarily. …Nevertheless, I’m going to try to apply the same advice, but to a different subject (totally without threaded parts). Strategy deployment (a.k.a. policy deployment, hoshin kanri, etc.). Huh?

So, you have been asked to lead an enterprise wide transformation. How many kaizen events should you plan on conducting in order to achieve sustained improvement?

A rather simple sounding but often vexing challenge that faces lean practitioners is: What is the optimal physical route for pickups and/or deliveries? This is especially true for a fixed interval, variable quantity material replenishment system design for water spider (a.k.a., waterspider, material handler, mizusumashi, etc.) conveyance. 

Interestingly enough, the same question and logic applies when designing the best neighborhood snow plow route. 

Larry Loucka, a close friend and colleague, recently pointed me to a February 16th Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article.

Now, before you roll your eyes and give me the WSJ-isn’t known-for-getting-the-lean-thing-right look, hear me out. What the Journal published is really, really good stuff…even if lean, and 5S in particular, was the furthest thing from their brilliant mind(s).

Recently, a handful of us fellow-lean bloggers had the opportunity to chat about the voice of the customer (VOC). This was not an abstract discussion about someone else’s customers. We were focused on our own – the folks who comprise our blogging community, the lean learning community.

Yes, we were talking about YOU…and whether we were (at least) meeting your needs. Hopefully, your ears weren’t burning.

Inventory levels rise and fall as supply and demand ebb and flow.  Inventory is at it's peak just as the next batch, kanban, or order arrives and then decreases as materials are consumed.  This rise and fall is known as cycle stock, the stock that

Triangle kanban, while one of three types of signal kanban, are unique in that there is only a single kanban per part number or stock keeping unit. Accordingly, kanban sizing math has nothing to do with determining the number of kanban - that’s obviously fixed.

Multi-Voting, also known as N/3 multi-voting, N/3 voting, dot-voting and sometimes mistakenly thought to be identical to nominal group technique, is a technique used by small groups to quickly select a subset from a broader set of options. This democratic approach allows team member to cast a finite number of votes, with few restrictions (e.g., individuals can’t “plump” all of their votes on one single candidate), for their options of choice. Ultimately, the process yields a rank order.