• From the Editor
• Manufacturing Excellence News
• In the Blog
• Upcoming Events
• Featured Book - Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement
• Article - Lean Healthcare
• Featured Blog Post - Why a To-Do List Doesn't Work

In late 2007 the Evolving Excellence blog held a poll to determine the public companies with the best lean manufacturing programs. We took the top twenty companies and created the "Superfactory 20." On Superfactory there is a page that ranks those companies from highest to lowest stock performance year-to-date in 2008, automatically updated every hour. 2007 data showed the Superfactory 20 returned over 20% more than the S&P 500... this year isn't starting off so hot! Take a look at the Superfactory 20 here.

For you LinkedIn junkies, we have created a Superfactory LinkedIn group. Join the group to display the Superfactory logo on your profile and network with other similarly-minded folks. If you haven't explored LinkedIn, take a look to find out why over 17 million professionals use it as a networking tool.

Superfactory is pleased to be a sponsor of the first Lean and Green Summit, to be held in Boulder, Colorado this July. This summit will gather professionals already making strides toward sustainability and those who want to start making the short and long term changes needed.

As always we appreciate your support for our mission to spread manufacturing excellence knowledge.

- Kevin Meyer

• GE keeps on rolling
  GoErie.com, PA - Jan 19, 2008
  
• Flexing Your Workforce: Maintaining Labor Effectiveness
  IndustryWeek - Jan 17, 2008
  
• Is it time to put your IT department on a diet?
  MMH.com, MA - Jan 17, 2008
  
• It's not Tata, it's the govt, stupid!
  Rediff, India - Jan 14, 2008
  
• Sharpening Your Skills: Operations Management
  Working Knowledge, MA - Jan 10, 2008
  
• Avoiding the Eighth Deadly Waste
  Supply & Demand Chain Executive, AZ - Jan 10, 2008
  
• Imports assail manufacturers
  Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PA - Jan 14, 2008
  
• Out to Launch
  IndustryWeek - Jan 15, 2008
  
• Pharmaceutical Resolutions for 2008:
  Pharmaceutical Processing, NJ - Jan 16, 2008
  
• Doyle reveals new plan to help state’s factories
  Hudson Star Observer, WI - Jan 16, 2008
  
• Getting By with Less
  Analytical Laboratory Equipment, NJ - Jan 16, 2008
  
• Businesses aim to create lean London
  Environmental Data Interactive, UK - Jan 18, 2008
  

Join the other 3,000 readers who get their daily dose of blunt manufacturing reality by subscribing to the Evolving Excellence blog!

Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:

• Boeing's Woes Continue - Boeing grapples with the effects of outsourcing not only production, but also design.
• Why a To-Do List Just Doesn't Work - How to establish work cadence and live in the calendar.
• Leadership as a Product - Companies like GE create more than just physical products.
• People in the New Year - Some companies are focusing on people in 2008.
• Developmental Efficiency - Is streamlined development lean or just cutting corners?
• SMED at 30,000 Feet - Want an example of SMED? Try taking a short flight!
• Lean is not Lean - "Lean" is sometimes an unfortunate term.
• Lean is Not a Metric - The fallacy of focusing on singular metrics of "leanness. "

Visit the Superfactory Events Calendar for the full list of events.

  Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement
  by Richard Schonberger

Why are some companies highly successful with their lean Six Sigma performance management initiatives, while most are not? Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement shows readers how to get process improvement going, and keep it going for many years. The key is an expended concentration on what are most important to customers, namely quality, response time, flexibility, and value. The author provides readers with valuable benchmarks and best-practice models based on results from his own extensive, long-ranging research, including hard data from 1,200 companies throughout the world.

More Information

Lean Healthcare
by Mark Graban, LeanBlog.org

Hospitals around the world are successfully implementing Lean methods for the benefit of patients, employees, physicians, and the hospital organizations. It is possible, through Lean and the Toyota Production System, to simultaneously provide better care, better quality, and lower costs.

Hospitals worldwide face a wide range of problems and pressures that have inspired them to look outside of healthcare for inspiration. Payers, ranging from government agencies to private insurers, are forcing price reductions on hospitals, which requires hospitals to reduce costs in order to maintain their margins. Even not-for-profit hospitals need to have a surplus to remain financially viable and to drive future growth. Hospitals are becoming less able to demand “cost plus” pricing that pays them for their efforts as opposed to being paid flat rates based on patient diagnoses. Compounding the pricing pressures, the U.S. government, through Medicare and Medicaid, has proposed new rules under which hospitals would no longer be paid for care required to treat a range of preventable errors, including some hospital acquired infections and items left inside patients after surgery. Hospitals would be left to absorb the cost of poor quality themselves, which should provide incentives for improvement.

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Why a To-Do List Just Doesn't Work
by Dan Markovitz

Jim Womack, founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute and the man responsible for putting Lean on the map (at least in this country), recently wrote an article about what he calls “cadence.” This concept ties in nicely to what I preach about how to “live in your calendar” rather than your inbox, and why a to-do list just isn’t a powerful enough tool to enable you to manage your work.

Please be patient with the lengthy quote that follows. I think it’s acutely relevant in a world in which your boss or colleague often drops stuff on your desk at 4pm and expects you to finish it by 9am the next morning – even though it’s been sitting on her desk for a week and a half.

I hope that every Lean Thinker by now understands takt time. This is the available production time per day divided by the number of items the customer is demanding each day. For example, if the single-shift production process operates eight hours a day (480 minutes) and customers demand 240 widgets a day, the takt time is two minutes...

Read entire post (you can also view and post comments)