Blog posts
A big buzzword right now is the internet of things (IoT). Is it really useful?
Recently I had the opportunity to participate in an IoT class and lab sponsored by Intel and Microsoft. I was able to set up sensors, connect them to a gateway, store the readings in a cloud database, chart both lo...
Many manufacturing firms run custom manufacturing, test, or calibration equipment that was designed for the first generation of a product. Sometimes this is perfectly adequate. However, it can also lead to the following costs.
Downtime due to a computer or I/O hardware failure wher...
Fred Hapgood writes in the latest issue of CIO magazine about the hstory and future of manufacturing (see Factories of the Future). He goes back about 100 years when the US manufacturers gained supremacy by applying continuous manufacturing techniques. We lagged behind on adopting lean technics a...
A couple of weeks back I was with a group that gets together quarterly to discuss business metrics and innovation issues. Our region has received one of the 13 US Department of Labor WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) initiative grants and we talked with some of the peo...
Many processes can be managed by just observing and asking good questions. In fact, if your processes are not able to be understood by observation, you might want to consider some simplification.
On the other hand, in order to engage in any continuous performance improvement you must have measur...
Harbour Consulting produces their Harbour Report North America on the productivity of Automobile manufacturing in North America every year. This year shows the gap between the automakers is narrowing.
One of their key measurements that Harbour uses is the Hours per Vehicle. This year's numbers ...
Last night I saw an advertisement for a movie (Dejavu) coming out where the police were predicting the future by being able to look at the recent past. Wouldn't that be a useful skill to predict the future? But wait a minute, we should be able to predict the near future by looking at the near pas...
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) released two reports that, taken together, point to a worrisome trend.
The first report "The NAM Annual Labor Day Report" points out the correlation between manufacturing output, productivity and employment. They have tracked these three measures ...
This weekend is the Labor Day holiday in the United States when we pause to honor all those who work. According to the U.S. Department of Labor website this holiday is "a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country". Th...
This phrase has been used in many contexts, including by the SAS Institute in the book Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth. It is particularly applicable to the manufacturing shop floor where fact-based information can drive improvements. Many improvements can be tra...
Last time I gave some of my thoughts after re-reading "Process Optimization That Measures Up" from Optimize Magazine. Even though this article is written for Information Technology managers, I think that there is some application to productivity in all areas. Bruce Rogow, the writer, suggests 6 a...
A lot of time and energy has been focused lately on business process optimization. Thinking about individual business processes is a good thing and can lead to improvements that pay real dividends. Reducing every aspect of a business to a process diagram misses the fact that organizations are org...
Some encouraging news was in the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics productivity survey . U.S. Productivity continues to rise at a rate of almost 4%. Manufacturing no longer leads the pack as it did when I last wrote about the numbers (see blog entry) more than a year ago, but we aren't far behind...
One of the drivers of lean manufacturing methods is the concept that keeping things as simple as possible will give benefits in understanding and executing manufacturing processes. There is a great benefit in keeping things simple and our company has always concentrated on simplifying processes. ...
The cover article in the May Intelligent Enterprise magazine, "Never Rest" correctly identifies two types of thinking. This difference in thinking is starting to provide a critical distinction between the perspectives of business leaders.
The new business reality is one of increasing customer po...
I was just made aware of the book Conquering Complexity in Your Business: How Wal-Mart, Toyota, and Other Top Companies Are Breaking Through the Ceiling on Profits and Growth by Michael L. George and Stephen A. Wilson. It was published in 2004, so you can even get a used copy now.
The basic prem...
The current KJR Newsletter by Bob Lewis caused me to go back to "Optimize" Magazine's September 2005 issue. This issue has an interesting interview with Michael Treacy (formerly of MIT's Sloan School) in their Business Leadership section. His observation is that the traditional lengthy strategy p...
Managing Automation magazine presents an interesting case study on implementing automation in the "Opening the Door to Automation" article. The article follows fiberglass door manufacture Plastpro through development of U.S. manufacturing facilities. The company started out by importing doors, bu...
The "What's Holding Back Lean" article from Managing Automation magazine incorporates the results of a survey that the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) did on factors preventing lean implementation. It is discouraging that the top 4 obstacles are basically unchanged since last year. The top factor...
This morning I went to hear my friend Bill Guest of Metrics Reporting give a talk to our local technology council on "Driving Profitable Growth". He has a lot of interesting things to say. If you want to hear his full presentation, check his web site for his class schedule.
One of his producti...
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