Documents and documentation techniques are hot topics these days. The ISO 9001 Standard brings this to the forefront with a section entitled “Documentation requirements.” Moreover, Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) and Statistical Process Control (SPC) systems have long stressed that good documentation is a key to sustaining successful processes. This article describes a user-friendly technique for … Read more
Are you ever frustrated because your ideas for implementing change in your company fizzle or at best lead to mediocre results? Here is an easy to utilize tool that often gets overlooked, but almost always yields results. Have you ever heard the statement, “what gets measured, gets improved”? Setting and communicating specific, measurable objectives of … Read more
All of us whether it is in our companies or our daily lives are at least talking about implementing something. Maybe it’s starting an exercise program, some home improvement, or a lean transformation which starts with a kaizen event for your assembly line. Implementing something new is how we hope to get better results or … Read more
How often do you go into the hardware store or the gym without a purpose? Not very often, right? Chances are you have a reason for being there, a mission, if you will. Missions that consist of buying a new tool or lifting a few weights may be small in the scheme of things or … Read more
“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! … Read more
Seeking new ways to improve without losing what one has. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about “driving change”. Not just because our own move created many changes that required and still require real effort to make changes for the better. We have also seen over the last decade the difficulties of the process our … Read more