Comments on: Lean manufacturing is resiliency

By: Tina

Tina — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:27 +0000

I’ve had the privilege of seeing the Toyota manufacturing plant in Japan in action and it is a truly beautiful thing. As a degreed engineer, who specialized in Lean Manufacturing and who is now attempting to start a garment manufacturing facility, it is my hope to put this book in my reading queue very soon. The concept of blame is a big problem in the factories of any industry – lean manufacturing has the potential to get the line workers more excited and involved in their jobs, but the psychology of the old “push” systems have to be overcome. When the Toyota line stopped, people scurried to fix the problem, got back to their station and things started back up immediately. It’s a matter of feeling ownership and responsibility for the success of the company, no matter what your “level” is. When each person feels they are a valuable part of things, and that others are counting on them, they take responsibility (not blame) for what happened at their station and move on. This is the ideal, of course, which is the whole philosophy behind Lean – continuously moving toward the ideal of efficiency, fulling knowing you can never reach it, but plugging ahead anyway.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:51:45 +0000

There is another reason it’s good to have several contractors, and to train them on ALL of your products. If you get a huge order at some point you can stop everything and shift everyone over to that one product until you crank out the order. It’s big company capacity with little company resources.

I am learning this the hard way! True, true, true, TRUE!

By: Vesta

Vesta — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:16:01 +0000

“A contractor I’ve known has always said that DEs should have multiple contractors even if they don’t seem to need them; in the event of a work stoppage, the work of one facility can cover the shortfall of the other.”

Learned that from a very smart woman who’s been in the industry for years.

By: jinjer

jinjer — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:08:23 +0000

I've been reading about Deming, and it's very interesting to see where lean came from. I think the best way to teach a company lean principles would be to teach them them Deming's fourteen points in an intensive workshop, and then on the second-to-last day, say "but Demingism is inherently wasteful--see you tomorrow when we'll talk about the Toyota Production System." At least Deming has a semi-traditional role for managers, so it's a good way to ease into the idea of continuous improvement. And once they've been through two mind-bends, they should be ready for the continual mindbend that is TPS, yes? Speaking of mindbends, a passage from the book I'm reading really gelled for me something that's been bothering me. namely: Deming says quality is meaningless unless defined by customer needs. (Duh, right?) So, if a woman doesn't care what the inside of her sewn product looks like, and doesn't care how long it wil last, but does value endless change and novel designs, then the energy put into improving the pattern and stitching quality is muda. Hence Forever21....and check out the recent lawsuit against them by their garment workers. tee hee.