Anyne Practice LEAN principles (Toyota Production System) ?

[Tom Delaney]

IF you really want to understand business improvment I'd HIGHLY recommend you find a book called 'the goal' by goldblatt (sp.). There are two versions - I personally like the first better than the second but they both get there. The second was updated for technocrats but the real world work ideas are the same. We ran our capacitor company by it and it is now the leader in motor start capacitors in North America. It is a very easy read (starts off with the guy's wife leaving him because he spends so much time at work!). You can do the entire book in about an evening without beer!

I know Barnes & Nobel used to carry it and can get it if you ask. About $20 bucks and well worth the expenditure.

[Scott Shepherd]

That's Elliot Goldratt and he also wrote a few more books that are insanely brilliant called "Critical Chain" and "The Theory of Constraints". We had a group of us who lived by these principles and it was really the highlight of my manufacturing career. Senior Management thought they could "buy some" of it all, so they just didn't get it. We did what we knew was right and ignored them most of the time, which worked well

A couple of books I picked off the bookshelf are "The Visual Factory" from Grief, "Kaizen, the key to Japan's Competitive Success" by Imai, and another one that should be on the top of the reading list would be "Lean Thinking" by Womack and Jones.

I know I've said it a few times now and others have said it as well, but I can't repeat it enough- make it fit your company and make it your own. If you try to do the things in most of those books by the letter, and do them all, you'll fail big time because many of the concepts and techniques are geared towards people making the same thing and making 1000's and 1000's of them each day and week. Make the system fit your company and you'll do great, and above all, get your people trained and let them own it. It has to almost happen from the bottom up instead of the top down, to some degree.

Anything by Goldratt is gold to me. It teaches you how to think using the Socratic Method, which is a life changing way to think.

[Harry Radaza]

Thanks for all the input.

I'm having deadlines due by the week and some due 60 days from now which are already being worked on due to the large order.

Any ideas on how to color/visual tags those due dates that fall on the 3rd week 2months from now, how to differentiate that from the current 3rd week of this month?

[Scott Shepherd]

Harry, two quick things- one, if you have jobs open for 60 days and that's normal, then color coding might not be the best option. Think shapes instead of colors as one solution. Also, it might be shapes or colors is wrong for your environment. Two- want to know how to handle it? Ask your employees to figure out a system for it. Doesn't have to be right the first time. Brain storm all sorts of ideas, think out of the box, and see which one gets the votes for trying. Try it, meet back, decide if it's working or not, and if it needs improving, let them figure it out, and then implement it. If you tell them how to do everything you'll miss the entire philosophy of it all.

Chances are once they see their ideas being tried, they'll figure out a system far better then any of us could without knowing your business.

Just my opinion.