Radical Lean Transformation One of the common questions that crops up during my conversations with my clients is – Why do companies have problems sustaining improvements through the application of lean manufacturing principles? The generic answer to this question is – Well, those companies are implementing lean manufacturing principles incorrectly! I personally find this answer … Read more
Integracore of Atlanta went for a field trip to the Snap On Assembly Plant in Murphy NC. The plant was voted one of the 10 Best Plants in 2010 by Industry Week Magazine. The video gives great examples of the application of lean principles such as visual management using kanban cards, color coding, etc. I … Read more
Lean Office Kaizen Here is another great learning moment from Wildwood Cabinetry proving that LEAN is simply a series of small and easy to implement improvements. Wildwood Cabinetry embarked on their lean journey after reading Paul Akers book called “2 Second Lean”.
Lean Manufacturing Transformation Starts With Education! A forward thinking company starts their Radical Lean Transformation by educating their employees to understand lean principles. Employees need to develop the know-how to apply lean principles to improve their own workplace. An important aspect of any Lean Transformation is process improvement, and this involves bringing about change. Employees, … Read more
Lean Manufacturing Process for Repairing Gas Turbines: Here is a short video from Ethos Energy demonstrating how lean manufacturing principles were implemented to improve the repair of gas turbines. Lean Manufacturing does not have to be complicated. In fact, lean manufacturing does not need too much complexity because it encourages you to keep things simple … Read more
Lean Manufacturing Factory Tour: I personally love the way that Paul Akers has taken his company FastCap and transformed it into a world class organization by implementing simple and easy lean manufacturing principles. Paul has not done anything fancy or complicated! He has taken the basic lean manufacturing principles and applied them to help improve … Read more
Lean Trash Can I was looking through my email the other day and I saw message from Paul Akers at FastCap. He wanted to share some information about a Lean Trash and how it was a perfect example of the way improvements develop over time. They never happen all in one session! Continuous Improvement is … Read more
Mapping the Organizations Vision! I get super excited when I find a great video that tells a successful story. I have been following Paul Akers focus on lean principles for several years. Paul is the founder and president at FastCap, an international product development and manufacturing company located in Bellingham, Washington. Paul is also known as … Read more
Are you trying to fire-fight your way to success? Every modern business, no matter who they are has limited resources in terms of time, people, equipment, etc. In reality, this translates into every business experiencing more problems than they have people with the time or knowledge to deal with them. This situation forces an organization … Read more
What is Strategy Deployment? Strategy Deployment was translated from the Japanese term “Hoshin Kanri.” It is loosely translated into “Ho” which means “direction” and “Shin” which means “compass needle.” The second word is separated into two terms of “Kan” which means “control” and “Ri” which means “reason or logic.” The process was developed by compiling the … Read more
