Manufacturers

Lean Quote: Ability, Motivation, Attitude

tmcmahon — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

“CAbility is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” — Louis “Lou” Holtz…

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Lean Quote: Opportunity is Dressed as Hard Work

tmcmahon — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Today’s Lean Quote is brought to you by Matt Wrye, blogger at Beyond Lean. Matt has a been a good friend through my online Lean trials and…

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Top 10 Reasons Why I Love Supporting FIRST

pkan — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:09:20 +0000

Here are my top reasons for supporting FIRST® — my company has been an official program sponsor since 2007, and I recently attended the 2012 championship in St. Louis, MO with part of the BWC team.

1. Kids learn how to work productively in groups
2. Creating a functional robot from a bunch of parts is pretty darn exciting
3. Kids learn why they want to stay in school
4. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) matters
5. Girls get a chance to get actively involved in STEM
6. Yes, girls can grow up to own and run engineering/manufacturing companies
7. Raising money for something you believe in is a great skill
8. How you play the game can be as important as winning the game — gracious professionalism
9. Being smart, creative, nerdy or geeky is cool
10. Dean Kamen is my kind of rock star!

Psst — Get the infographic my creative team made about this year’s program … we’ve got a PDF download on our website. Check is out and let me know what you think! http://www.bwc.com/linear-motion-infographics.vp.html?WT.mc_id=Blogger

Why Your Career Path Is Like a Golf Ball

Jeff Hajek — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:56:04 +0000

I want you to think for a moment about how a golf ball flies. It may have a path of hundreds of yards in the air, but there is only one point where you actually have any impact on the ball. It is in the first few inches of motion. After that, there is little you can do to change the flight of that little round ball. Sure, you can yell ‘Fore’ if it is heading for someone, and you can play your way out of a bad lie, but once the ball leaves your club, things are out of your hand.

In some ways, that is how a person’s career travels. Every action you take on the job is like swinging a club. Make a good swing, and you launch your career a bit further down the course of life, getting you that much closer to the next reward. Misplay the ball, and you end up in a hazard.

Now, if you’ve played golf before, you’ll know that the further behind you get early on, the more risks you have to take to keep up. If you are playing well, you might not take a low percentage shot to carry a stream. That just means that you might hit the ball short and take a guaranteed second stroke versus trying to swing a bit harder and get the ball to land on the other side. Swinging harder tends to result in stray shots, and there is no guarantee that the ball will make it over the water anyway. Being in high risk situations all time is no way to spend a round.

Or a career.

The same principles hold true at work. If you want to have a long, fruitful career, you have to avoid mistakes. Every time you make a bad decision, the boss sees it, and it makes it harder to win that big raise/promotion/choice assignment/premium account. You’ll have a much easier path to success if you don’t put yourself in the position of having to constantly work your way out of the proverbial sand trap. That’s the pragmatic side of it. Higher up Maslow’s hierarchy, you probably won’t be very happy if you don’t find your job fulfilling. It is hard to like a job if you feel like you are constantly digging your way out of a jam.

What always stuns me is that people spend millions of dollars and countless hours trying to improve their golf game. Yet those same people seldom invest a few hours reading a book on how to get better at their job, or spend a few dollars on a class or a DVD to learn a new skill. They just keep playing the game the way they always have. Solving symptoms instead of root causes. Acting on hunches instead of collecting data. Working from the same old bag of tricks without adding tools to it.

As the owner of a Lean training company, I am curious about what you have seen that encourages people to take more initiative on training themselves. The simple fact that you are reading this blog means that you have taken a step to set you apart from the people who are content with business as usual. I’d love to see your comments about what makes self-improvement important to you, and what you do to get past the barriers and excuses that hold others back.

One of the things I do is set aside time for a little bit of learning on a regular basis. That self-discipline is hard to do, though, for many people. To help with that, I have put together some ‘Lessons of the Day‘ that are email subscriptions that deliver lessons right to people’s inboxes. We have series on leadership, problem solving, and Standard Work. But it still takes something to get people to sign up for the lessons in the first place.

That is really what I am asking. What keeps people from taking action to get better at their job?

Statistical Process Control

anurrahman — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Statistical Process Control (SPC) uses statistics & control charts to tell when to adjust process. Developed by Shewhart in 1920’s. It involves : creating standards (upper & lower limits), measuring sample output (e.g. mean wgt.), and taking corrective action (if necessary). SPC done while product is being produced. SPC Chart is a chart with time on the horizontal axis to plot values of a statistic. SPC Chart is one of Seven Tool for Total Quality Management (TQM).

Statistical Process Control Steps

Originally Posted on ArifInfo.com.

Lean Quote: Teach Problem Solving As They Occur

tmcmahon — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +0000

“The best time to train workers is when an error is first detected. It also is the best time to solve a problem.” — Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, VP of…

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Lean Quote: Defining the Problem

tmcmahon — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +0000

“We need to first define the problem. Albert Einstein once said: “If I had an hour to save the world I would spend 59 minutes defining the…

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We’re Fools For Being Number One

pkan — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:38:50 +0000

Just in time for April Fools, on April 1, the United States became the country with the highest corporate tax rate in the world. This was triggered by Japan reducing their rate. As cited by The Daily Caller, “Our top corporate tax rate has hovered at 35 percent for years. Meanwhile, other countries have gotten the message that lowering corporate taxes encourages growth. Canada has engaged in a series of cuts, ultimately reducing its corporate rate to 15 percent. Great Britain recently announced it will drop its corporate tax to 24 percent next month and then 22 percent by 2014.”

I know some of you are going to say, well what about all those big companies that pay no taxes? Well you are right. The effective tax rate for the large companies drops us to about sixth highest in the world, according to some economic pundits. The problem is that most companies are not operating like those big guys and it is the small and medium size businesses that are really the economic engine of our country. When you figure that most small business are filing as S corps, then I have heard that the effective tax rate could be as high as 50 percent.

In my state it is even worse since California is broke. There is no plan in sight to create any sort of economic development. Instead we pass the most stringent environmental laws IN THE WORLD that cost billions to California based businesses. Now we have two proposals to increase income taxes, once again, a direct hit to all those small businesses that file as S corps.

For those of you who complain about U.S. jobs moving off-shore, this tax burden is a huge part of that equation, along with the fact that US companies carry about a 20 percent regulatory cost burden above any other country in the world.

Personally, I would love to see the tax loop holes closed up and a movement toward a flatter tax rate. There is definitely a problem when I am in a meeting to discuss tax issues for small business and the two IRS representatives can’t even agree on what the tax law is or how it should be applied.

I know this is a hot topic right now, so share your creative ideas on how you would solve our country’s tax code problems and once again make us competitive with the rest of the world.

Definition of Demand Forecasting

anurrahman — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:57:18 +0000

Forecasting is the process to predict how the future needs, which include the requirement in the size of the quantity, quality, time and location that is required in order to meet the demand for goods or services.

Demand Forecasting is the demand for products that are expected to be realized for a certain period in the future. In forecasting we must pay attention to forecasting procedures should be implemented, namely :

1. Determining the purpose of forecasting.

2. Choose the item “independent demand” to be predicted. Plot data into scatter diagram.

3. Selecting “forecasting method” in accordance with the pattern of data for its intended purpose.

4. Counting errors are to be performance of each method used, can be known.

5. The selection of the best method, which has the smallest error rate.

6. Make predictions of future demand, then perform the test verifies that the forecasting results carried out a representative to the past data.

Originally Posted on Arifinfo.

Lean Quote: Leadership is All About People

tmcmahon — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:00:00 +0000

“Leadership is all about people. It is not about organizations. It is not about plans. It is not about strategies. It is all about…

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