Use Lean to take the waste away

It is still a little surprising to me when I read about companies just discovering the benefits of Lean Manufacturing. The concept has been around for quite some time (it was originally termed "Lean" by the LEI in the late 1980s) and it is even permeating into other sectors such a Health, Finance and Administration. In fact, any business that has a process of some sort (every business?) can benefit from Lean.

In brief, Lean is the reduction of waste in all its forms. And while the traditional Seven Wastes has been expanded to include Eight or Nine Wastes, Lean essentially aims to reduce the following wastes:  

1. Over production
2. Waiting
3. Transportation
4. Inventory
5. Motion
6. Over processing
7. Defective Units

Click here for more details about what these mean and how they negatively affect your business.

Two important things to remember here. Where Lean Manufacturing fails is when companies have approached it as a one-off event - it should be treated as a continuous improvement program and there are tools you can use to ensure Lean is implementable and sustainable in your organisation. Second, it's success should be measured as a cultural change above all else. It is fine to see productivity rise and that's ultimately what everyone wants, but when staff buy into the Lean mentality and it is part of the culture, you know you have been successful and will be in the long term.

The Lean tools I mentioned before are outlined in our ProEdge Manufacturing Excellence program, which has been scheduled for this year - the next one is in Mackay, Queensland on 19th February.

Lean Manufacturing gets results too. Read some of our recent success stories of companies that have implemented Lean well (click on the business name to read the full case study):

Austchrome:

• reduced job turnaround times from 30 to 17 days
• increased production volume by 50%

Before and after Lean at Austchrome

Townsville Pallet and Crate:

• 100% delivery in full, on time

Brisbane Tray Bodys:

• increased productivity by 100%
• increased productivity wins mining client

There is a whole new blog topic where you can relate the principles of Lean to those espoused by sustainability advocates, but for now, just know that Lean works, it's scalable and your competitors are probably already doing it.

Engaged workers make inspired/happy/productive workers

A great article from Innovation Excellence about the three types of workers in any given organisation: Engaged, Not Engaged and Actively Disengaged.

The article details the ramifications of having workers not engaged in the business and happily, a number of strategies to remedy the issue. Of particular use is the infographic see below:

An article well worth reading especially if you're interested in re-engaging your staff. Click here to read the full article.

The Boeing debacle: Seven lessons every CEO must learn

This article by Steve Denning published by Forbes is doing the rounds at present. It's highlighting the mechanical problems faced by the 787s that is costing Boeing more money on a project that was already over budget. But it's not specifically a Boeing bashing piece.

It highlights the 787 project as one example as part of the broader issue of offshoring.

1. Use the right metrics to evaluate offshoring
2. Review whether earlier outsourcing decisions made sense
3. Don't outsource mission-critical components
4. Bring some manufacturing back
5. Adequately assess the risk factors of off-shoring
6. Adequately value the role of innovation
7. Get to the root of the problem: maximising shareholder value

You can read the whole article here and while I believe it provides a good rationale for approaching the question of offshoring for enterprises, it also provides some good foundations for an industry policy.

The diffusion of the Maker Movement and how anyone can get involved

While getting back into the social media swing of things, I've noticed a bit of talk around about the Maker Movement. The Maker Movement is a typical culmination of technology diffusion. Actually that is wrong! It is really evolving rather than culminating because we cannot be 100% certain of the path the technology will take from here.

Nevertheless, the Maker Movement has sprung from additive manufacturing technology, which in turn sprang from the rapid prototyping technology that was used by larger companies to test parts and new product concepts. Additive manufacturing is a technology similar to stereolithography (SLA) as introduced to Australia by our company QMI Solutions in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The interesting thing here is the rate of innovation diffusion and the technology adoption cycle. Dr Tim Kastelle has a great blog post on What Makes Innovation Diffusion Difficult. But the Maker Movement, while new in name, has been under development for at least 20 years and it is really only because the technology has been proven, has increased uptake, has consumer-friendly platforms that it is now becoming a movement that is accessible and affordable.

Late last year, Editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson left this position to write a book on the Maker Movement subject Makers: The Third Industrial Revolution but also to run his own company 3D Robotics. The third industrial revolution was the subject of a previous post. In this interview with Tech Crunch, he says "hardware is the new software" and evidences the power of the Maker Movement when the CAD file of an IPhone case was open sourced - taking customisation to a new stratosphere it allowed customers to put "their own DNA" into the design process of the finished product.

His story about how he got involved in the Maker Movement via LEGO is great too.

And while it's great to see a new movement in manufacturing the best thing about the Maker Movement is that anyone can be involved.

Top 100 innovation articles for 2012

Happy 2013! I thought I'd start the year by looking back at some of the great innovation content from 2012. Innovation Excellence has profile the 100 best innovation articles from 2012. Click here to read their whole  list.

Suffice to say, there is a wealth of content here for any business wanting to improve, however even just the Top 10 prove interesting reading:

1. Beyond Stage Gate – Repeating Disruptive Innovation – by Jose A. Briones, Ph.D.
2. Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2011
3. The Rise of Social Innovation – by Nicolas Bry
4. Five Tech Trends Impacting Business Innovation in 2012 – by Tim Sweeney
5. Has Microsoft Leapfrogged Apple – by Greg Satell
6. 10 Success Principles of Apple’s Innovation Master Jonathan Ive – by John Webb
7. Tips for Crowdsourcing, Innovation, and Savings – by Jessica Day
8. Boosting Personal Innovation Capacity – Iterate! – by Dennis Stauffer
9. What’s the Difference between Creativity and Innovation? – by Paul Sloane
10. Top 50 Innovation Tweeters

It's great reading I hope you enjoy.