Fashion-Incubator

How absolutely cool--i've mentioned your poka yoke to a couple of people and they thought that was such a neat way to guard against mistakes.

Kathleen - you did such a great job of explaining a concept as well as a specific hint to improve a process! Thanks for letting us use the article. Here is a link to the article in the context of the newsletter. http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/get-newsletter.pl?LEAN&20060109&2&

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Karen

Brilliant article Kathleen! Good job. I whole heartedly agree with the concept of having the patternmaker accessible to the sewers at all times although would like to add that I think its also important to create an environment for the patternmaker where he/she can have some peace and quiet to concentrate.

A sidenote: I was once a design assistant at a company that was having some problems with their first samples. There was a lot of miscommunication going on and the main sample maker was having a hard time. She was old school and kept clean finishing things that were supposed to be left raw. She is a really smart lady with decades of experience and to me it was clear that the problem was a combination of getting used to new methods and also a communication problem. So I suggested she'd be brought in for fittings for a while, hoping that would solve the problem. The sewers had to walk up 2 flights of stairs to approach the designer and the pattern maker was off site. So I also suggested the sample room would be moved closer to the designers lounge (it really was a lounge - you could have fitted 3 sample rooms in there). I cant describe the look on the designers faces when I suggested this. They didn't even think it was worth responding to. Your article reminded me of this.