Lean Insight and Product Reviews
A great tool for management to maintain and improve the work flow is called the 5 M’s. By always keeping an eye on the 5 M’s, the managers will be able to see when something is not working in a process and ensure efficiency and profitability. The 5M model can be used for risk management,…
The story of Six Sigma’s origin started in a place where good stories rarely begin: aboard room, in a manager’s meeting. By the time the 1970s rolled around, the Toyota Production System had been implemented and Toyota was becoming one of the best manufacturers in the world. Motorola was finding their company unable to compete…
Smartphone’s have become more than just a luxury for many people and businesses today. They give you easy access to essential communication tools like email, text and, of course, voice. In addition, you can access most types of documents on them through the Internet, and do many other activities that can help make working much…
What if employees could lose weight, improve health and become more productive at the same time? A treadmill desk offers these benefits and more. Many people have read about them before–they have been in the media a lot lately. Let’s take a closer look and see why office desk treadmills improve productivity. Office desk treadmills…
As each day comes and goes we often find ourselves just going through the motions as a means to get through them. We wake up, go to work, come home, and repeat. It’s a cycle that’s tough to break and while it may seem robotic from the outside, to you it’s just another day. Unfortunately,…
Meetings can be a source of wasted time if not organized and conducted properly. Most organizations waste up to 20% of their payroll on bad meetings based on employee wage and time spent in meetings. Meetings can be described as wasteful if any or all of the following things occur within the meeting: Meet and…
Lean, Kaizen and 5S are not just for manufacturers 5S can create some hard divides between those who love and appreciate the peace and calm that order bring and those who, while not necessarily “loving” chaos and disorder, still feel more at home amidst piles of paper, missing tools such as staplers and rulers, etc.…
Kaizen Events and how to implement them Because Kaizen is usually an event in itself, discussing the meaning and implementation of kaizen in a business setting, this book is both aptly titled as well as targeted. Making the kaizen event even more “kaizen-like” in it’s makeup is the direction of this writing by Geoffrey L.…
This is a great case study on how an office environment can be influenced by the Lean philosophy. View a ‘real’ example of an office that operates with end-to-end flow. The people at Duggan Associates do a good job of showing us how applicable lean can be in an office environment, where, as they show,…