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Trend Prediction
Hello, this is Elizabeth, one of the student process improvement coordinators at Michigan Tech. This semester one of the classes I am taking within the department of mechanical engineering is...
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Defining and Creating Customer Value
At the heart of Lean is a focus on the customer and a spirit of continuous improvement. In this post, I want to discuss the concept of customer value. Many people think they have a firm grasp on the...
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Fire Prevention Is the Key
Do you spend your day putting out fires at work? Running from one emergency to the next? Trying to contain the damage? This is an exhausting way to live, and unfortunately, all too common. You might be...
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The Quarter Pounder
During a recent Auxiliary Services Report Out, Bob Hiltunen gave an incredible teachback demonstrating the benefits of one-piece flow over traditional batch and queue. He was able to do this through an...
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Continuous Improvement of Annual Events
During Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival event, I started thinking about how continuous improvement works with events that have a really long time between them. The preparation work for Winter Carnival...
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Lean Culture: Respect for People
When Lean principles are fully understood and Lean tools are correctly applied, the opportunities for improvement and growth are endless. I have been a part of the Office of Continuous Improvement for...
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Confirm Your Scope with SIPOC Diagrams
One of my favorite continuous improvement tools is called a SIPOC diagram. A SIPOC diagram is used by a team to identify all relevant elements of a process improvement project before work begins. Using...
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Learning to See
Remember the Magic Eye pictures? They appear to be computer-generated abstract images but, when you look at them just right, out pops a 3-dimensional (3D) object. The object was there all along, but...
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Eliminating Waste by Tossing the Tube
I recently saw a commercial for Scott Naturals Toilet Paper. The commercial doesn’t seem much different from any other toilet paper commercial until the end when you realize this new type of toilet...
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Lean in Their Own Words
Pattie working on a training exercise At the April graduation ceremony for our new Lean facilitators, the graduates each said a few words about what Lean means to them. Many of them have given me...
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Lean in Their Own Words
This is the second installment of Lean in Their Own Words. At the April graduation ceremony for our new Lean facilitators, the graduates each said a few words about what Lean means to them. Many of...
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Lean in Their Own Words
This is the third installment of Lean in Their Own Words. At the April graduation ceremony for our new Lean facilitators, the graduates each said a few words about what Lean means to them. Many of them...
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Sharpen Your Ax
At the Michigan Lean Consortium‘s annual conference, I attended a session on A3 Thinking for All Seasons by Brian Vander Weele. Brian began his session with a compelling story: A young man approached...
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Are You Making Excuses or Solving Problems?
“When we find barriers that prevent us from closing the gap are we a victim that makes excuses or a leader that solves problems?” This the closing statement from a talk given by Mark Graban at the 2014...
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Lunch and Learn at the Lean Enterprise Institute
This summer I had the great fortune of being a mechanical engineering intern at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. While in Cambridge, John O’Donnall, Executive Director of...
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A Calm Mind, Ready to Learn
One of the main ways we create value here at Michigan Tech is educating students. Our goal is to get the student in the classroom with a calm mind and ready to learn. Anything that gets in the way of...
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Satisfying Internal Customers: It’s Still Important
We are pleased to present this guest blog post by Gregg Stocker, a lean advisor for Hess Corporation with over 20 years experience in a variety of disciplines including operations, manufacturing, human...
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Lean and S.W.E.
I just got back from the national Society of Women Engineer’s (SWE) conference held this year in Nashville, TN. I was pleasantly surprised because there were three different sessions being held on...
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A Lean Thanksgiving
Your family is gathered for Thanksgiving. The usual mix of relatives is there, and not everyone gets along. After a couple of hours, nerves begin to fray and tempers start flying. What is there to do?...
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Document Management – A 5S Opportunity
I was recently given the opportunity to be a Lean facilitator for a 5S Kaizen event. The goal of the event was to organize the Van Pelt and Opie Library staff document management system. I found this...
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