Archive for December 2024
Toyota Change Point Management: Henkaten
Henkaten is an approach by Toyota to deal with changes in their manufacturing system. It is one of the lesser-known words of the lean vocabulary. Often translated as “change point,” it is about managing a change. However, there is no magic behind yet another Japanese word. It is all just the basics like most methods…
Read MoreHow to Minimize Downtime During Digital Change
The integration of Industry 4.0 solutions can significantly enhance operational efficiency, particularly in terms of minimizing downtime. However, achieving these outcomes requires careful planning and execution. Fortunately, there are three key steps that can enhance your operations now as you work to implement new technologies while also balancing operational continuity. Reduce asset failure with…
Read MoreWhy We Need Visual Management…
Visual management is a hot topic in lean manufacturing. It is not a do-or-do-not method like kanban or SMED, but it is an underlying soft approach that just makes manufacturing easier. It won’t fundamentally change your operations, but it will smoothen a lot of problems. In this post I will go through the reasons WHY…
Read MoreWhy Operators Need to Measure Their Own Data!
The goal is to have everything relevant easily visible on the shop floor. Ideally, this is through the design of the shop floor as part of visual management. But a lot of other information is hard to see directly and can be shown best through data. Every well-managed shop floor has their different dashboards and…
Read MoreRobotic Case Picker Doubles Worker Throughput
Designed for use in the consumer packaged goods, food and beverage and medical supplies industries as well logistics and retail, CaseFlow orchestrates a fleet of Vecna Robotics CPJ pallet jack robots to perform all pallet-based travel in a warehouse and direct human pickers, equipped with connected wearables, with tasks generated from a warehouse management system (WMS). Using Vecna’s Pivotal…
Read MoreKaizen Through Growing Your People
As mentioned in my last post, continuous improvement (kaizen) is done through people, ideally close to the shop floor. You should always look for people to develop and grow, as they in turn nurture your continuous improvement. While it is really hard to give specific recommendations that apply to everybody, let me muse a bit…
Read More