Posts by Christina Fazzari
Why 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 MoreLarge Scale Scrum (LeSS): The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Agile
Modern organizations seek ways to take on larger projects and demands by scaling their agile practices. This is where Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) proves key, helping organizations to apply Scrum principles at scale. What is Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)? Large Scale Scrum, aka LeSS, helps scale agile practices across multiple teams, maintaining the core principles…
Read MoreThe 7 Principles of Lean Software Development: A Guide
Lean principles are helping streamline the processes and drive better results in software development. Toyota’s manufacturing practices invented these principles which overall have changed how nowadays software teams approach development projects. Throughout this lifecycle of development lean software development focuses on increasing the value while maintaining the minimum waste level. Key Highlights Overview of Lean…
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 MoreRockwell Automation’s Integration Strategy
“When you think about manufacturing, you can see just how it important it is. From providing food and clean water to medicine and energy, what manufacturers do matters,” said Blake Moret, chairman and CEO of Rockwell Automation, establishing the Make it Matter theme at Automation Fair 2024. He added that manufacturing is, of course, also…
Read MoreBehind the Slowdown in Robot Orders
Given all the interest in robots we’ve been seeing over the past decade, a recent report from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) noting a decline in the North American robotics market didn’t come as too much of a surprise. The A3 report showed a decline in both units ordered and revenues, with unit orders…
Read MoreWho Does Kaizen?
One core aspect of lean manufacturing is continuous improvement, or kaizen in Japanese. This concept emphasizes ongoing, incremental enhancements to processes, products, and services. Yet, there are commonly differences between how Toyota does kaizen and how the rest of the world does kaizen. These mostly relate to who does most of the kaizen activities. In…
Read MoreA Common Mistake in Doing Lean: Skipping the Details!
Lean manufacturing is a great set of philosophies and tools to improve your production system, or for that matter any kind of operational system. Yet, many supposed lean implementations fail. One of the various reasons for failure of a lean project is a lack of attention to detail. Let me explain: Production Systems Are Highly…
Read MoreMitsubishi Introduces a New Robot in its Low-Cost Series
New to Mitsubishi Electric’s RV-CR series of lower cost robots is the IP65-rated Melfa RV-12CRL six-axis robot, which features a 1,504 mm reach and 12 kg payload capacity. This extended reach allows the robot to access hard-to-reach areas in applications such as machine tending. The RV-12CRL houses its cables and air hoses internally to boost…
Read More