Guide
Practical Lean guide
Lean in practice
9 of 13 articles
The most expensive machine in the hall stands still the most
The new machine was supposed to solve everything. Now it stands still more than it runs, and nobody can say why. Usually it is not the machine but everything that happens around it.
Delivery date promised, delivery date missed. What is really behind it
The customer calls, the date is gone, production gets the call. Yet the date was already lost before the first chip fell. Where delivery reliability actually comes from.
Your warehouse tells you the truth about your processes
Inventory is a frozen decision. Every shelf, every buffer stock, every piece of dead stock tells you where a process is not working. You only have to be able to read what it says.
The ten minutes of shift handover that shape a whole shift
One shift leaves, the other arrives, in between a handshake and half a sentence. What is lost in these minutes, the night shift never makes up. How to design a handover that holds.
A standard is not a sheet of paper, it is the best known way of working
Laminated instructions hang everywhere, and yet every shift does it differently. The fault lies not with the people, but with the understanding of what a standard is.
The suggestion box is where good ideas die
Your people have ideas. They write them down, post them and never hear of them again. After the third time, they stop. That is how a plant loses its most valuable source of improvement.
The board is up, the numbers are right, nobody looks
Every week the board is updated, and every week the shift walks straight past it. A board nobody stands in front of is wallpaper. What it lacks is not a better KPI.
The poster on the line has never improved a process
The standard hangs laminated on the machine, the work is done differently. I explain why standards die, what boards can and cannot do, and how to build standards that last.
Fifteen minutes in the morning that save the whole day
Many boards are up, few have an effect. The difference lies in the format, not the board. How to build a daily meeting that makes deviations visible and forces actions.