From the Editor

Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter!

As a fun project this month we created Lean Pics, a photo blog showcasing examples of lean manufacturing concepts and ideas. Visit Lean Pics.

The Superfactory video library, with nearly 600 virtual factory tour and lean informational videos, has been relaunched Superfactory TV to maintain the videosin a YouTube style. Visit Superfactory TV.

We are running a promotion with our partner Gemba Academy where we'll send you the Gemba Academy Lean Starter Package DVD, a $97 value, for no cost with the purchase of any Superfactory PowerPoint presentation package or bundle.

- Kevin Meyer

Manufacturing Excellence News

Stories of interest to the lean community.

• Lean Manufacturing: Top Resources for a Lean Library
  Business Review USA - Laura Clapper - ?Jul 5, 2010?
• Public sector in dire need of cost controllers to wield the knife
  Independent - Sean O'Grady - ?Jul 4, 2010?
• Manufacturers get push to 'go green'
  New England Business Bulletin - Beth Perdue - ?Jun 25, 2010?
• US Automakers Back On Top
  IndustryWeek - Jonathan Katz - ?Jun 25, 2010?
• Lean and Agile in the LVHM contract manufacturing arena
  Electronic Technology Products - ?Jun 21, 2010?
• Tricks of the Trade
  Fleet Equipment Magazine - Doug Kaufman - ?Jun 22, 2010?
• Rising Above the Recession
  IndustryWeek - Josh Cable - ?Jun 25, 2010?
• Celebrating at Philips in Sparta
  UC Daily News - ?Jun 30, 2010?
• Wisconsin industry is embracing change
  WTN News - Tom Still - ?Jul 5, 2010?
• The American Dream....In Shades Of Green
  WXIA-TV - ?5 hours ago?
• Kings of takeout
  Kilgore News Herald - Louise Larson - ?1 hour ago?

In the Evolving Excellence Blog

Join over 5,000 readers who get their daily dose of blunt manufacturing and business reality by subscribing to the Evolving Excellence blog!

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Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:

• Management Trumps Culture Every Time - What we can learn from the BP fiasco.
• Backlog Reduction Gut Check - Going lean takes guts - especially when you watch shorter cycle times eat away at backlog.
• The Elite Idiots - Paul Krugman and other so-called economists that just don't get reality.
• Clicking with Lean - How proximity and common interests affect group and individual performance.
• The Perils of Waterless Progress - Sometimes the strangest things get in the way of progress - even the waterless urinal.
• 72 Hours. 1 Billion Dollars - Perhaps the G20 summit should have been via videoconference?
• Misery Loves Company - What Obama and the U.S. could learn from the rest of the G20 on manufacturing policy.
• Hope Isn't a Business Strategy - Schneider National goes for real lean.
• Value From United - Too much flying has taught me something about value.
• The Bane of Complexity Part 4 - Part four of a study on unnecessary complexity.

Visit the Evolving Excellence blog...

Featured Discussions

The Superfactory LinkedIn Group has nearly 5,000 members networking and discussing various aspects of lean manufacturing. Hot discussion topics this month include:

• How to calculate overall line effectiveness and overall plant effectiveness
• Is collaboration the next supply chain optimizer?
• Indicators for a non-continuous process
• What factories would you recommend for benchmarking lean assembly?

Join the Superfactory LinkedIn Group to network with and learn from a group of lean leaders!

Upcoming Events

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Featured Book

Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream will change the way you think about your supply chain and logistics networks giving you a way to act using lean principles to transform and continuously improve. In this pioneering workbook, lean logistics veterans Robert Martichenko and Kevin von Grabe explain step-by-step a comprehensive, real-life implementation process for optimizing your entire fulfillment stream from raw materials to customers, including two critical concepts: calculating the total cost of fulfillment and collaborating with across all functions and firms along the stream.

More Information | Previous featured books

Featured Article

Woollard's Eighteen Principles of Flow Production
By Bob Emiliani

Frank G. Woollard, the long-forgotten 1920s British pioneer of flow production, made many unique contributions including the establishment of 18 principles of flow production. Woollard recognized that flow necessarily drives everyone to the same principles and eventually to the same practices as well. Knowing this can help us avoid the perennial problem in Lean management of periodically re-discovering that which was previously done so well but has been forgotten.

In his book Principles of Mass and Flow Production [1], published in 1954, Frank G. Woollard said: “When setting up a flow production plant there are certain basic principles that must be obeyed. They are all simple and virtually axiomatic…” Mr. Woollard identified 18 principles, listed below, all of which relate directly to our current day understanding of Lean production.

Read the entire article | Previous featured articles

Featured Evolving Excellence Blog Post

Gotta Get Their Heads Out of the Buckets
by Bill Waddell

I once heard a Parker Hannifin controller describe engineers as people who are good with numbers but lacking the personality and social skills it takes to be accountants.  While that is a pretty funny wisecrack and I have gotten a fair bit of mileage from plagiarizing it, I think the truth is that accountants are folks who are good with numbers but lacking in the ability to think in terms of complex systems.  They are at their best when they can put things into neat little buckets, then look at each bucket - one at a time - figuring out all the minute details of the activities within the buckets.

How else can we explain two groups looking at exactly the same situation and drawing diametrically opposing conclusions.

On the one hand we have Mike Devine, CFO at Coach; Dennis Secor, CFO at Guess;Jim Kenney, JC Penney's Senior VP of Corporate Strategy; and Michael Nicholson, AnnTaylor CFO all looking out over the gloom and doom of the rapidly rising costs of stuff coming out of China and mulling the relative costs of doing business in places like Vietnam and India instead.  They are peering deep into that cost bucket and agonizing over the 22% of cost they believe labor represents and the 60% materials and logistics make up.  Lots and lots of alternatives in that bucket and they are all neck deep in trying to figure out the best cost.

Then we have Niki Tait from the UK - looking at the same overall situation - but seeing the situation holistically, rather than in neat little buckets.  She is worrying about profits, contemplating the entire forest, while her financial counterparts previously mentioned have their nose pressed so tightly against the bark they can't even see the whole tree.

Read the rest and comment... (13 comments so far)