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We hope you enjoy this month's edition of our operational excellence newsletter. Please take a few minutes to read the article on the "Upstairs Factory.You may be surprised to learn that the average Fortune 500 company fritter away more than 12% of its potential earnings because of inefficiencies in its administrative processes.
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Quantum Associates, Inc
Operational Excellence Newsletter
Delivering Swift and Significant Results
"Our groove is to help you improve."
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June 2016
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Conduct an Assessment Before Implementing Lean in Your Company
Lean manufacturing is one of the most widely utilized business improvement methodologies. Some companies just start implementing the lean methodologies (because they have heard that lean manufacturing implementation will reduce their waste and costs) without a thorough assessment of the needs of their business. They often start using one tool at a time until the boss declares it's done.
Worse yet, some companies find a consultant that knows 5-S and little else. When the consultant leaves, the clean and organized business eventually realizes they are clean, organized and still full of waste.
The correct approach to implementing lean manufacturing begins with an analysis of the company's needs, opportunities and challenges. Once these opportunities are identified, the tools are used which will solve the issues. These tools might be lean manufacturing, theory of constraints, or Six Sigma tools. It simply wouldn't be prudent to limit the success of a lean initiative to exclude any tool if it was known to solve the problem at hand. In other words, the problems identify the tools rather than the tools being forced into the organization.
Some of the lean manufacturing tools are 5-S (sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain), value stream mapping, kanban, takt time, continuous flow, cellular manufacturing, TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), SMED (single-minute exchange of die), OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), line balancing, standardized operations, seven wastes (muda), error-proofing, kaizen and root cause problem-solving.
There are a few tools that can and should be used with any lean manufacturing initiative. The 5-S tool is a powerful workplace organization tool. This tool makes sense in any business. It would be hard to find an organization where order and organization didn't make sense.
Root-cause problem-solving tools should be used in every lean manufacturing implementation. These tools vary based on the problem. Some of the more common are cause and effects analysis, five-why analysis, 8D method, CT trees, process mapping and affinity diagrams.
Utilize lean manufacturing principles to identify and solve business issues and the financial impact will justify their use. If the tools are made to "fit" the organization, the result will be chaos, disruption, low morale and financial loss.
Willie
Willie L. Carter is the president Quantum Associates, Inc., Highland Park, Illinois. Along with his nearly 40 years experience in operations, quality and consulting in various industries, Willie is a Certified Lean Sensei, Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence, and a Certified ISO 9000 Lead Assessor. He can be reached at wcarter@quantumassocinc.com
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The "Factory" Upstairs is Draining Your Productivity
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Contributor:William Heitman, Managing Director, The Lab Consulting
When most executives think of an industrial company, they picture a highly disciplined factory under constant scrutiny for any evidence of inefficiency. Let's call this the "downstairs factory." It rarely occurs to anyone that there could be similar "upstairs factories" in the same company -- in non-factory departments like finance, marketing and sales...(Read More)
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Natural Work Teams, The Untapped Resource
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Contributor:R. Keith Mobley, CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering
Many people think the concept of using small groups or work teams was developed by Toyota, but in truth they were in use in America long before Dr. Edwards Deming, Philip Crosby and others introduced the concept in Japan... (Read More)
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Doctors go "Lean" to Cut Wait Times, Improve Health-Care Efficiency
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Contributor: Blair Crawford
Family doctors in Eastern Ontario are learning the business lessons of banks and car makers as a way to make their practices more efficient...( Read More)
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For Welty, Lean Construction is the Next Building Block
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Contributor: Judy Stringer
Welty Building Co. president and CEO Don Taylor was delighted when Akron Children's Hospital approached him in 2012 about the construction of a $240 million medical tower at its downtown Akron campus...The 368,735-square-foot Kay Jewelers Pavilion opened last May, two months earlier than planned and at $178 million, 26% under budget. In addition, the seven-story facility is 34,000 square feet smaller than it would have been had they followed a traditional building design practice, and operating margins are tracking at about 33% higher than similar facilities, Taylor said...(Read More)
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Our Reason for Being
Quantum Associates was founded on the premise of bringing together like-minded associates with multiple years of industry experience reducing waste and improving processes in organizations. Our goal is to leverage the knowledge and experience of our seasoned associates to assist both service and manufacturing organizations train their employees to untangle intermingled processes in order to clearly see the specific process they manage or touch as it flows from start to finish and to improve the performance of those processes so that every stakeholder (customer, employee, supplier, investor) is better off. We serve as the nucleus for delighting your customers by preparing your people to improve their processes.
What We Look For in a Client
We look for companies/organizations who want to untangle their processes in order to clearly see how to improve the performance (efficiency, productivity, customer experience) of those processes so that every stakeholder (customer, employee, supplier, and investor) is better off.
We guarantee 100% customer satisfaction absolutely.
"Our groove is to help you improve."
Enjoy the Newsletter,
Willie L. Carter
President
"All improvement happens project by project and in no other way." ~ Joseph Juran
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