Moving to Flow
Background What is lean? The majority of people when asked this question reply “waste elimination”. This is true. However, Taiichi Ohno’s original definition of lean was “the complete and thorough elimination of waste to reduce the timeline from receipt of customer order to delivery”. To achieve this more complete definition necessitates the creation of product flow…
How to Beat the Foreign Competition
I write a lot of articles in which I address the issues and concerns of warehouses, distribution centers and manufacturing. In case you haven’t noticed – domestic manufacturers are facing a world of hurt these days. And I have heard every reason imaginable as to why domestic manufacturing is in such a state – much of…
There is a Nail in Your Forehead…but I am good with that if you are.
My father, who was a manager at International Business Machines (IBM), once told me; “If it were not for the ‘people problems’, management would be easy.” In the world of management, and management consulting, truer words were never spoken. And so is the challenge with most consulting engagements, especially when the words “transformational change” are uttered. My…
Case Study: Operational Excellence Audits as Key Driver
Background: From 1987 until 2009 I was CEO of Interbake Foods, a food processing company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. We competed in four business segments: Girl Scout cookies, contract manufacturing for branded companies, private label cookies sold to retailers, and baked ingredients for ice cream processors (primarily ice cream sandwich cookies and cones). Interbake had no…
Quality: So what good is it anyway, from an operations perspective?
Okay, we know that ‘Operations types’ focus on production, yield, shipping/receiving of raw material, scheduling, and more production. They figure their job is to make product, and more product, and continue making product according to the Master Schedule (at the required yield level) in order to make their numbers for the day/week/month. And they are right. …
Uptime Magazine – “Operational Excellence: See the Flow of Value” by Joseph Paris (July 2013)
Operational Excellence: See the flow of Value, by Joseph Paris as featured in the June/July edition of Uptime Magazine®. Download PDF