Category: Lean Manufacturing
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Efficiency vs. Productivity: Metrics that Matter…Until They Don’t
Measure efficiency and productivity against your REAL goal I keep seeing the word efficiency in manufacturing media. As someone who specializes in Constraints Management, this term is particularly vexing. It’s one of those words that I believe should be used with extreme caution. When we look at the organizations of today, words like efficiency and…
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The Devastating Impact of Too Much WIP: How Excess Inventory Kills Manufacturing Flow
In manufacturing, WIP (Work in Progress or Work in Process) refers to partially finished goods that are at various stages of production but not yet completed. In accounting terms, WIP represents the value of raw materials, labor, and overhead that has been invested in unfinished product. Reducing WIP is a frequently cited goal for many…
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Finite Capacity Planning: The Key to Meeting Customer Expectations
Table of Contents In competitive markets, meeting customer commitments is critical. If resources like inventory, people, and equipment were always readily available, consistently delivering on time wouldn’t be such a challenge. The difficulty is that nearly all manufacturing operations have constraints. In this post, I will drill down into finite capacity planning, how it helps…
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Kaizen vs. Kaikaku
Kaizen vs. Kaikaku: 2 Approaches to Lean Manufacturing That Can Transform Your Factory The Lean Manufacturing world is littered with new terminology, and given the discipline’s origins, it’s not surprising that some of these words and phrases are Japanese. Being “fluent” with these words to the point that you can bring them up in…
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Why Data-Driven Manufacturing is Not Enough
Occasionally, someone will mix up DDM (Demand-Driven Manufacturing) with another DDM acronym in our industry: Data-Driven Manufacturing. There are similarities. For example, executing demand-driven principles relies heavily on data and shop floor visibility. However, it doesn’t stop there. In this post, we’ll take a look at Data-Driven Manufacturing and why it’s useful but not enough…
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Going Lean: Should You Replace Your ERP System?
By Trey Jordan, Senior Software Consultant Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has been around for decades. You’d think, by now, the industry would have it figured out. Yet, every year, we hear news about ERP implementations that fail. For every one of these high-profile flops, there are many, many more implementations that simply fail to live…