Lean maintenance: Is it a new concept or another ‘acronym’?
It seems as if new weight loss programs and products come out every week. The latest I saw was a plastic wrap that you place around your stomach called
Featured Story
CI groups can do more harm than good to lean efforts
As strange as it may sound, I believe that continuous improvement (CI) culture is something that many organizations resist without realizing it. Sometimes it is not a mountain to climb but an anthill to step over. In this blog, I will discuss that anthill as I have seen it. Culture is defined as integrated knowledge,
Lean Manufacturing
Coke, Pepsi and lean: Is it all in the packaging?
By Eric Bigelow • on March 2, 2010
I have been a developing change agent at my company for about five years now. I have saved my company a lot of money and have been promoted twice. I have had the opportunity to be trained by multiple lean
Is a deflationary economy a bad thing? Not from a lean perspective
By Jim Huntzinger • on January 15, 2010
The United States has created levels of wealth well beyond any other civilization in history. Yet, much further potential is sitting right under our nose. This potential lies in lean thinking; that is,
Reliability Engineering
An examination of problem-solving and the ‘Error Pyramid’
By Bernie Price • on January 21, 2010
When faced with the task of “improving plant efficiency”, the average plant manager breaks the task down by the five or six existing “departmental silos”. Each silo leader subdivides
Reduce or eliminate waste through training
By Robert Apelgren • on January 14, 2010
Following along with my blog “Reliability is a green initiative”, I would like to talk about waste reduction by training. Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing, and many of
People Management
Expert advice on how to deal with difficult people
By Debbie Zmorenski • on February 3, 2010
One of the first people to study difficult employees in the workplace and to assign specific characteristic descriptors to these groups of people was Robert M. Branson. In 1981, he wrote a book called
A game plan to resolve conflict in the workplace
By Debbie Zmorenski • on January 18, 2010
Conflict in the workplace seems to be a fact of life. We’ve all seen situations where different people with different goals and needs have come into conflict. And, we’ve all seen the often-intense
Maintenance Excellence
Best-selling checklists?
By John Crossan • on February 16, 2010
As an unrepentant checklist fanatic/junkie, I recently had to pick myself up off the floor in an airport newsstand (not a bookstore, but a newsstand!). There with all the romance novels, Dan Brown books
Follow-up, performance matrix frequently absent from CMMS process flow
By Kris Bagadia • on February 9, 2010
Many organizations are using their computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) as a recordkeeping tool. If that’s all they want, a spreadsheet perhaps can suffice. A correctly used CMMS is
Other Posts
Flavor of the day: Terror isn’t just for airplanes anymore
Christmas Day. Terror in the skies! A bomb and a terrorist pass through airport screening undetected. If not for a failure to detonate, there would be
Tips for maintaining a complete and accurate equipment registry
The equipment registry is one of the most important tools in your kit when it comes to maintenance and reliability. It can be the foundation of your planned
Why improvement efforts fail
Why do improvement efforts fail or perhaps not sustain the gains? There are many reasons, but those most often stated are “lack of commitment”
Go execute the CI plan!
Hello out there, and happy belated Thanksgiving to you! Before I start the actual blog, I wanted to tell you all that I am very thankful to be an American.
Money from honey: Africa lean project generates results
I recently wrote about my trip in August to Zambia in Africa. I was visiting with my friends John and Kendra who have been working in Zambia for the past
Improvements must be generated, implemented on a daily basis
I heard a radio interview some time back with Neil Sedaka. If the name is no longer familiar, he is probably one of the most successful songwriters of
Effective strategies for coaching and developing your employees
Performance coaching is not about disciplinary action, nor is it about accountability (although it may promote accountability in the long term). It is
PDCA: Moving from the Plan (P) to the Do (D)
Hello, all you Lean Six Sigma people! I hope this blog finds you all doing fantastic! I have been working on a series talking about the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)
Your CI list is long. Which projects should you pursue?
In my last blog entry, I talked very generally about the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act). In the first blog in this series, I wrote about how too many
