March 6, 2021
As a follow-up to the video about the production process for baseballs, Mark Graban of LeanBlog.org passed along this ESPN video about how baseball bats are made.
Forest to Field from ESPN Creative Services on Vimeo.
Very interesting to see all of the production steps together, all the way from a felled tree to Hanley Ramirez’s locker in Miami.
So recognizing that all processes (whether they’re deemed efficient or not) will have some waste activities inherent within, here are some of the waste activities I saw in the video.
Obviously there will be more, and not every waste can be alleviated. The tree is felled in Pennsylvania, but the bat is created in Louisville at the Louisville Slugger plant – waste of transportation would be minimized if the felled tree didn’t have to be shipped so far or could be processed as close to its roots as possible – Louisville Slugger isn’t going to relocate itself to where the trees it uses are growing.
You have to look at waste activities as those parts of the process for which the customer isn’t willing to pay. Louisville Slugger is willing to pay for trees to be shipped from Pennsylvania if they’re the preferred ones. Ideally those trees would be closer. Maybe Hanley Ramirez wants his bats delivered a dozen at a time in a cardboard box with each bat individually bagged.
But if there is an opportunity to find ways to reduce the investment in time, money, or effort in order to accomplish what the customer desires, the opportunity should be investigated.
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