Reduce Material Costs or Reduce Labour Costs? Manufacturing cost reduction is at the centre of lean thinking. It's by no means the whole thing but if your lean efforts aren't guiding you to better financials, what's the point in pursuing a lean path. Strong lean thinking positively shifts Turnover (over the longer term), Profit and Cashflow. Remembering Alan Miltz's mantra "Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king" is helpful. In a deeper sense lean thinking and a sharp cost reduction brain, ceaselessly searching for kaizen and low cost innovation, will give a better return on ass ..read more

Standardised Work documents have a lot in common with children; many of us in manufacturing have got them, they can be tricky to manage, and all seem to have different names. Names like: Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Standard Operating Instruction (SOI) Standardised Work Instruction (SWI) Standard Work Instruction (SWI) Work Instruction (WI) Operation Manual Sheet (OMS) Whatever you call them, I’m certain you’ve seen and felt their value while also experiencing the pain of weak SOPs (I’ll stick with that acronym for this blog). We recently proved to a client that 'time' is not the barr ..read more

You're probably not as safe as you think you are! Here's a fact that I've observed: Almost all lean-minded people preach SQDCP Safety first, Quality second. This fact is also true: The same group of people routinely demonstrate dubious personal safety behaviour on the gemba. I have no doubt they carry the unshakeable belief that their behaviour is safe enough. The reality suggests otherwise. This contradictory behaviour entered my awareness after peering into an unsavoury mirror and realising, several times during the past decade, that I didn't entirely walk the walk. During that period, I hav ..read more

What is Hoshin Kanri? Hoshin Kanri, often translated as Policy Deployment or Strategy Deployment, essentially means “North Star”. These are the things you're leading the team to achieve to improve your business. Essentially, it’s the vital few things you've got to do over the next year to turnaround a difficult situation or stay ahead of the competition. As you already experience as a lean leader, all eyes look to you when it comes to strategy. You personally often lead, create, and execute the lean strategy whilst still having to run the business at the same time. So, a simple Hoshin process ..read more

Problem Solving & Movies are two things we like at Sempai. The former we’ve been coaching for 20 years. Sometimes very well and in the early days, not so well. We've loved movies since schooldays and have learned many lean lessons from them. "Moneyball"for example, is packed full of lean wisdom. This blog is about Practical Problem Solving in movies, and it's not our first on the subject. Here's our 7 step method to develop Practical Problem Solving skills & the 10 most common mistakes to avoid. Our lean Problem Solving Method Over the years we’d broadly carved Problem Solving up into ..read more

Kaizen and benchmarking As the Rugby World Cup in France comes into view, we thought we'd take a look at how the elite sports of Rugby, Cycling, Cricket and, ahem, Competitive Eating use lean principles to excel. Let's start with Eddie Jones, an international rugby coach who has taken different teams to 3 Rugby World Cup Finals. Here's how kaizen helped him get there. Eddie can be hard to like, a wilfully divisive figure. On the surface he can seem arrogant and fixed mindset, especially around the media, but he's surprisingly humble and willing to learn from far and wide. Inside football alone ..read more

Why do you need a Practical Problem Solving method? Practical Problem Solving models are often shared online BUT the pitfalls are rarely well explained. In this blog we’ll be drawing on our own painful experience gained over 25 years, working across the world with hundreds of companies to illuminate those pitfalls. Here are the top 10 pitfalls as a list, scroll down for tips on how to avoid each. Too big a problem Looking in the wrong place Brainstorming alone Having a loose focus Getting hung up on your fishbone Switching between brain sides Being rooted to the spot Changing too much at once ..read more

,5S ACTIVITY 1.Sort 2.Straighten 3.Shine 4.Standardise 5.Sustain What is 5s? 5s is an interesting and often misunderstood building block of lean. Understanding ranges from the ill-informed:,“it’s a fancy way of saying - clean up and do your housekeeping” to the deeper understanding of:,“it’s how we organise the workplace to support safety, quality cost and delivery” all the way to the philosophical:,“it’s a way to bring managers closer to the shopfloor and build relationships” 5s is a way for people to organise their working area to allow them to focus on making a good quality part, safely and ..read more

In lean manufacturing there’s a lot of talk and focus on Team Leaders mastering tools like ,5s, Standardised Work and the 7 Wastes. These “Kaizen skills” are really important but will be of little value if your Team Leaders haven’t got the fundamental “Control Skills" What is an effective Gemba walk: “Patrolling your Patch”? “Gemba walks” have had a lot of coverage in recent years. “Patrolling your Patch” is a less fashionable but equally important activity. It refers to making use of every step a Team Leader takes in walking around their line/cell/area of control. We’ve all worked with peopl ..read more

Our blog "2 lean skills your Team Leaders should have: Change Points" covered one of several simple skills that make a real difference to the life and effectiveness of a Team Leader. This blog covers another, the much underrated ability to think like a dead Italian economist. Practically speaking, how to peer out onto your manufacturing empire, big or small, and separate the vital few from the trivial many using the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) Vilfredo Pareto can't help us in person, at least not without a heater and some serious smelling salts (to quote Good Will Huntin ..read more