30 learnings from my LEAN journey

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L7: Inventory is your friend. Here is why.

January 14, 2022

Fluctuations cause problems for all production systems. During the shift, we produce different products or product variances. Processes will take longer than planned or will be faster. We can have different quality issues or breakdowns. Parts may arrive early or late. Essentially, the material does not flow at a consistent speed but often moves in waves - sometimes faster and sometimes slower. Fluctuations create disturbances in the production process therefore a major part of lean manufacturing is r educing fluctuations. To eliminate the impact of fluctuations - inventory is our friend. The buffer inventory goes up and down like waves and decouples the fluctuations. This allows our machines and operators to work at a constant speed . Consequently, we can provide our internal customers with material despite e.g., a fluctuating demand. If we cut our inventory, our ability to decouple these fluctuations decreases. Inventory is one of the 7 wastes in production that we shoul

L6: Problem Solving concept.

January 04, 2022

Question 1/2: How do you know you are solving the right problem? Many managers require people to come with solutions and not with problems. I find it problematic when solving problems in production. People might be solving problems that are not important. Issues that are not crucial now – or not crucial at all. The first step in problem-solving is to be sure you solve the right problem. To optimize production efficiency, we need to thoroughly analyze and improve processes before attempting to improve operations . That is the leading principle in deciding whether we have the right problem on the table. The best way to understand whether we deal with the right problem is to know how the current issue impacts the production system. Synthesis precedes Analysis. Synthesis focuses on the function of a particular process, it reveals why things operate as they do with regards to the production system itself. When discussing the problem, the reasonable question is: How does this situation fit t

L5: Learning to See

December 27, 2021

It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see - Henry David Thoreau Just a blink of a second, and you can make the right decision. Or not. It depends - it depends on many factors. One factor is experience. Not knowledge but skill. We do not acquire skills by reading. We develop a skill by doing – that is where learning is coming from. We can experience that in math. To learn how to calculate the equation, we need to calculate them. There is no other way. My math teacher at high school taught me one method to solve any equation. That method is called: I look, and I see. The teacher told me: to be good at math, you need to do homework, you need to calculate many equations, many different equations. Then, after the time, you will get to the point where just by seeing the equation, you will immediately know how to solve it. That is the reason why math teachers are good at solving equations. They solved thousand of different equations. They spend a lot of time practicing m

L4: Production mechanism

November 17, 2021

My favorite doctor is a dentist. I always look forward to the twenty minutes of torture on the dentist's chair. Just kidding - I hate it. I think everyone does. Maybe the dentist performing the routine likes it, and perhaps he does not like it too 😏 I mean, I can manage to be calm during the intervention. It, however, depends on the office equipment and the atmosphere. Being attached to the dentist's chair in the basement with no windows is a totally different experience than being in the dentist's office for children with colorful things and even cartoons on TV. Of course, it depends on preferences 👦 What happens during the visit to a dentist, and how is it related to LEAN? Everyone was at least once at a dentist's office. Being a LEAN manager, you would directly spot many things for improvement. However, that is not the point for now. Let's take a step back and focus on the basics. What work is performed at the dentist from a production point of view? When you e

L3: The five elements of production

October 25, 2021

What if I told you I know the receipt how to quickly orientate yourself when in production. What if I even give you that receipt. Will you take it? If yes, keep on reading 😊 Imagine you enter a production shop floor for the first time. What is the first thing you notice? How do you orient yourself in what you see? Those were my questions for a very long time. When I saw a production site for the first time, I was overwhelmed by machinery, materials, people. Sometimes it looked chaotical. Sometimes very clean and in order. So the first thing I started to notice was whether production was clean. Yeah, after a time, my focus was on 5S. In other words, whether the shop floor is clean and organized. However, I felt it was not enough. I knew I needed to be looking for something more sophisticated. Something more related to LEAN than just 5S. As you already know, I started to understand the production system after reading books by Shigeo Shingo. In my previous blog , I state that to understa

L2: The source of knowledge

October 15, 2021

"To spend three years looking for a good master is better than to train for three years with a bad one." I got that advice when studying Aiki-Jitsu during my University time. Nowadays, I see the application of this advice in every field a person wants to get better. Why? For one simple reason - there is a lot of junk knowledge everywhere. So how do we know which master is a good one? We don't. At least not at first sight. When I encounter new knowledge, a book, or insights from the training, I always ask myself: am I able to apply that particular knowledge to the practice immediately? If yes, I try it, and then I decide whether the new learning is good. If I cannot apply the knowledge immediately, then it remains knowledge. You know the saying: Gemba is the best teacher. Applying a theory in practice is the best filter to differentiate whether the information sources are reliable. I read, on average, 18 books a year , plus some blogs and articles. And I very often do obse

L1: Language matters

October 09, 2021

The most important learning on my LEAN journey is not about the LEAN at all. When I started to discover the real business world - just after University- I attended one Leadership training. It was that kind of „ tasting” training, which consulting companies do to attract people. I guess companies do it hoping people will buy a complete training. So, I did not expect much from it - and as you might guess - I also did not want to buy the training afterward. However, there is one learning that stuck with me for all those years. The learning worth more than the learnings I gather from many complete trainings I paid for. The trainer at one point said that the most essential tool of a successful leader is a dictionary . Not a translation dictionary, but a dictionary in one’s language. Weird, right? It seemed to me be weird at that time. Oddly, I kept reminding myself year after year without understanding why it was so crucial. Recently, I found out why. The paradox is that I realized that a