Manufacturing Leadership

Andon is a system that alerts people to problems before they happen, in order to make the process more efficient and prevent issues. In manufacturing, an andon is a system that tells managers, maintenance workers, and other employees about a problem with quality or the manufacturing process. But is this all that Andon being?Andon is a system that alerts people to problems before they happen, in order to make the process more efficient and prevent issues. In manufacturing, an andon is a system that tells managers, maintenance workers, and other employees about a problem with quality or the ...

In the wake of economic downturn, foreign competition, spiking oil prices, and even war, American business throughout this decade has been thrust into crisis. To improve their performance, corporations everywhere have adopted a wide range of tools and techniques, yet many continue to struggle. Going Lean points to a better way.

Laine Griffey brings over 20 years of expertise in quality management, with a strong background in both operations and quality. With a career spanning diverse industries from plastics to automotive, Laine has consulted with numerous companies in developing and enhancing their quality management systems. Having worked at every level from the production line to management, and performing tasks ranging from internal audits to supplier quality assessments, Laine is a recognized authority in the field.

Giving machines and operators the power to notice when something is wrong and quickly pause their work. This helps companies to increase quality at every step of the process and to have workers and machines work separately for better efficiency. Jidoka is a fundamental concept in the Toyota Production System, which is an important way of doing things in Toyota factories. It is one of the two main principles, along with just-in-time. Jidoka is a system that helps identify problems quickly because if a problem happens, work immediately stops. This helps make things better and prevents ...

The most important thing in standardized work is finding a balance between giving employees strict rules to follow and allowing them to be creative and come up with new ideas to consistently meet difficult goals like cost, quality, and delivery. The secret to finding the right balance depends on how standards are written and who helps create them.

Future-Proofing Manufacturing & the Supply Chain Post COVID-19 provides practical go-forward business concepts than can be applied to any manufacturer, distributor, logistics, or supply chain organization. It covers from soup to nuts, function by function including strategy, talent, product supply, operations, and much more on what a company should do to safely navigate, successfully emerge, and prepare to thrive near-term as well as following the pandemic.

When it comes to lean tools, 5S is one of the easiest to implement as well as one of the best ways to introduce employees to the idea of continuous improvement. What's more, it has a proven track record thanks to the success Toyota has had using the system for decades. 5S works by pinpointing waste that is hiding at all levels of the company and doing what it can to ensure the waste is minimized as much as possible.

Starting in the early 1900s, efficiency pioneer Henry Ford began working on a system for continuously improving the processes in his factories. The spiritual successor of this goal is known today as Six Sigma, and it can provide you and your company with a better way to measure quality than you have ever used before.