Category: Blog

Recently, an operations executive expressed his frustration about the management’s inability to manage their company in these hard economic times. He complained about limited integration between Finance and Operations affecting their decision making. The CFO runs business models in Excel spreadsheets, but the models are not tied to the operations systems. The scenarios cannot be […]

A culture of continuous improvement is vital for success. Leading companies engrain this mindset at all levels of the organization, and provide the necessary resources and management support to sustain initiatives. However, many senior managers are beginning to ask for more. They want to know precisely how any change in the operational environment will specifically […]

Lately, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) has taken center stage as the measurement of choice among manufacturers. Most have adopted it as the measure of their performance. A significant segment uses it in “real time” to control shop floor. It is common to see electronic boards hanging over manufacturing lines prominently displaying OEE along with other […]

Ensure Process Improvement Meets or Exceeds Business Expectations Your organization is guided by lean principles, invests in people and lean practices, and deploys tools that help identify and reduce wasteful activities while increasing customer value. Your plant has smoothed out uneven production flows, converted to cellular operations, moved to smaller batches, transformed the culture, and […]

As I reflect upon my “Lean” experiences with various German manufacturers it strikes me that I am often left wondering, “What is the real issue here?” We want to sell a product at the best possible market price and at a high profit, and the only way to do that is to have a company […]

Changing market conditions, increased competition from generics, difficulty bringing new products to market, high regulatory costs, etc. are putting intense pressure on life sciences companies. The recent headline in the Wall Street Journal, “Drug Maker Wyeth May Cut 10% off Work Force Over Three Years,” (1/25/08) is just the latest in a string of news […]

We often get asked, “What’s beyond Lean?” or meet managers who say “When we started doing Lean we were way ahead of the pack. But now our competitors are doing it too, so how do we get back in front?” What this tells us, is some people believe just using Lean tools makes them Lean, […]

The majority of manufacturing companies are pursuing strategic initiatives to improve business performance. They range from traditional Lean and Total Quality programs, to include a more recent IT-driven focus on creating a Real-Time Enterprise (RTE). Despite the widespread adoption of such initiatives, recent research shows that companies do not make full use of the many […]

Much has been written over the years about the difference between doing the right things versus doing things right. This is the effectiveness versus efficiency challenge. The legendary management thinker, Peter Drucker captured the essence of this challenge in his famous observation, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what […]

A business can be like a hanging mobile. Pull on any part of it, and the whole thing will go into a dance until some kind of equilibrium is restored. That’s just what happens when you take one part of a production process and change it. We typically focus on that one part, but all […]