http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/ A Blog About Understanding TPS and Gaining Its Full Benefits, brought to you by "The Toast Guy" Wed, 27 Jan 2016 22:21:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-310 Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:51:30 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-310 […] from their operations, Lean implementations are tenuous and tactical at best.   Updating  Roger Milliken’s 1989 assessment of the three biggest obstacles to continuous improvement (top management, middle […]

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-175 Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:55:38 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-175 You may have got the “CI is 10% tools and 90% people” quote from “The GBMP Model”, http://www.gbmp.org/files/NewGBMPmodel.pdf – even though it also just makes perfect sense.

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-124 Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:21:52 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-124 […] Shingo went on with quick review of EOQ, economical order quantity, a conventional formula to calculate the “optimal order quantity” for produced inventories by balancing the fixed costs per lot produced against carrying costs.  Typical application of this model had treated changeover time as a fixed cost without opportunity for significant improvement.  Shingo’s genius was to demonstrate that radical improvement to changeover was not only possible, but it was easy. His ideal was to reduce EOQ to 1 piece.  But Shingo’s book, SMED, had been published only three years before his 1989 presentation; neither the tool nor the principle behind the tool was well understood in the US at the time.  The case studies in Dr. Shingo’s presentation were those of early adopters.  Particularly for the many academicians present at the conference, Shingo’s ideas represented new thinking.  Shingo now took aim at them with this admonishment: […]

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-120 Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:50:06 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-120 […] In the spring of 1968, out of the desire to do something positive, I took a break from college to join VISTA, Volunteers in Service To America, a government program for confused idealists like me that was created to help break the cycle of poverty in depressed areas of the US. Perhaps it was fate that my training for VISTA landed me in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. King’s home city. It was there that I received what is probably my most valuable management training ever (see VISTA trainer Matt Timm’s advice quoted in Random Access Memories.)  […]

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-37 Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:12:34 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-37 […] than the sociology.  As I offered in an earlier blog (Random Access Memories), TPS success is 10% tools and 90% people, and particularly in the case of 5S there is a tendency to glam onto the attractive benefit of “a […]

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-34 Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:38:06 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-34 I knew the TPS kool-aid had taken hold of me the day I arrived at work and my desk (on the shop floor) had been moved as part of a kaizen activity over the weekend, and my only reaction was “ok, I’ll figure out where they put it and I hope they remembered to hook up my network connection.”

]]> http://oldleandude.com/2010/12/30/random-access-memories/#comment-26 Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:00:44 +0000 http://oldleandude.com/?p=103#comment-26 Bruce,
I always love your moments of reflection and sharing as it provokes me to pause and reflect as well. I especially love mama Clara’s quote! Thank you for your memories.
Happy new year! – Alice

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