Pittsburgh Pirates and Poor Security Planning and Deployment TAGS: baseball | consulting | debut | edward | gerrit cole | lean | lean blitz | major league | mediocrity | nsa | operations | pirates | pittsburgh | pnc park | process | rob neyer | security | snowden | sports | time studies | understaffed | value stream mapping | wanding Last week the Pirates’ #1 pitching prospect Gerrit Cole made his MLB debut, and for a franchise that has been mired in mediocrity longer than this year’s crop of incoming …Continue reading →

What Your #Mother Can Teach You About #Lean TAGS: 5S | behavior | chad | clean | consulting | family | lean | lean blitz | management | may | mother's day | organize | quality | reward | safety | time studies | tools | visual | walters Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out in the world – if it wasn’t for your mother, you wouldn’t be here to read this. It’s an understatement that my …Continue reading →

Lean is a Revenue Driver TAGS: american | asq | black belt | blower | briggs | certification | constrained | continuous improvement | customer | cycle time | defect | driver | eliminate | engineer | flywheel | lean | lean blitz consulting | lean is | machines | margin | operator | processes | project | quality | revenue | schedule | six sigma | society | standardization | stratton | thomson plastics | time studies | tonnage Lean is obviously a lot more than just elimination of waste activities in processes. It has the power to impact other areas of operations. One of the projects I managed …Continue reading →

Lean and the Profit Equation TAGS: assets | blitz | business | equation | expenses | footprint | inventories | lean | liquid | maintenance | money | operations | overdeliver | processes | profit | revenues | save | seth godin | six sigma | time | time studies | underpromise | waste To examine the impact lean implementation can have on a business, let’s look at the high-level super-simplified equation for profit. PROFIT = REVENUES – EXPENSES Components of the revenue term …Continue reading →

8 Wastes – Waiting TAGS: cleaning | concession stand | efficiency | kanban | labor balancing | lean | lean wastes | machine downtime | preventative maintenance | sales associates | standardized work | time studies | waiting (This is the third in a series of deeper dives into the 8 lean wastes.) We’ve all seen operators of a concession stand or sales associates on the floor of …Continue reading →

Target Audience – Part Two TAGS: 5S | car maintenance | check fluids | check oil | gnomes | kanban | kitchen kanban | lean applications | lean at home | lean tools | motivation | scheduling | spaghetti diagrams | time studies | tire pressure So who else am I targeting as an audience? There are lots of little improvement opportunities and Lean applications that can have a big impact at home. What can each …Continue reading →