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.
Be cautious when there’s some, be cautious when there’s none, and be cautious when adding more than one.
What do the heck does that mean???
Let’s take these correlation cautions one by one.
Be cautious when there’s some. Suppose you did a study and found a correlation between job performance and high school grades. Does this mean that if we simply increase everyone’s high school grades that they will perform better at work??? Clearly not!
Every part every interval (EPEI) is my favorite lean metric for high mix/low volume (HMLV) value streams and probably the least known. It’s especially helpful when changeovers are a significant portion of capacity as frequently is the case with machine-oriented operations.
As some of you may recall, I launched a new blog called Lean Math back in February with a couple of my buddies. In my humble opinion, I think that the ever-growing content is pretty useful stuff for lean practitioners.
In any event, I just wanted to share some basic holiday lean math...
On behalf of Michael O'Connor, Larry Loucka, and myself, I would like to thank you for investing your valuable time this year reading our posts and sometimes sharing your thoughts. We truly appreciate your readership and we hope that we have, in some way, provided assistance in your lean journey.
In that spirit, some basic holiday lean math follows...
PEACE ON EARTH + GOODWILL = HAPPY HOLIDAYS
