Manufacturing is where many Lean ideas were first developed—but lasting results never come from tools alone. This archive explores manufacturing through the lens of leadership, safety, culture, and systems thinking, drawing lessons from real plants, executives, and frontline experiences that still matter today.
From Toyota and NUMMI to modern aerospace, appliance, and industrial operations, these posts show how manufacturing excellence depends on respect for people, learning from problems, and designing systems that make the right work easier.
The Connecticut Post Online – Shelton firm shows off streamlining: Here’s another story about a small private manufacturing company, Electri-Cable Assemblies, and their lean success. It seems like all I’m able to feature here is small companies. The larger Fortune…
Along with the profiles of this year’s Industry Week’s Best Plants Award, the latest issue includes the latest census data on continuous improvement. Of course, a survey question being checked on a website is far from direct observation (or gemba),…
A tale of two factories – FORTUNE Here is an interesting piece from the latest FORTUNE magazine. The reporter visited two Tenneco Automotive plants that both make mufflers — one in Litchfield, Michigan (my home state) and one in China.…
Got Boondoggle?: Japan Day 1 – Toyota Motor Kyushu Boondoggle indeed, Mike! I am really looking forward to reading more of Mike’s posts from Japan. He is traveling with a Gemba Research “Kaikaku” Tour of Japanese lean factories. Notice, you…
Aero-News Network: Columbia Aircraft Puts Bend Factory On A Diet Read the article and answer me this: did Columbia Aircraft have this bass-ackwards? They were facing booming demand (350% increase), yet they delayed lean for 12 months until after the…
Onshoring may not be the counter-argument to offshoring, particularly since most of the cases are just KEEPING work in the US when it could have moved overseas. That’s not really onshoring, it’s just preventing offshoring. This article from The Manufacturer…
I won’t comment on this much, because I’m not an expert on the Chinese auto industry (I still buy U.S.-built cars). But The Great Race: China offers big challenges but huge opportunities offers a primer on the ins and outs…
I’ve been posting a few comments on factory design (Part 1 and Part 2). Here a final, but important, comment on what people do wrong as they design a new factory, or re-layout an existing one. 5. The Design Process…
I’ve been posting a few comments on factory design. See Part 1 here. Here are a few more comments on what people do wrong as they design a new factory, or re-layout an existing one. 3. Secondary Flows We place…
I did some of my long-ago masters thesis work on factory design (you can read a rather dated article on the topic here). I’ve had the opportunity to design factory layouts ranging from a $1B investment down to a company…
Here is the sixth, and probably final, installment of my tales from the NUMMI tour. You can revisit them by starting with Tale #1 and continuing on from there. One more important reminder from the NUMMI visit reinforced something I’d…
NUMMI Tour Tale #4: The Pull Gift Shop While the NUMMI plant would score very highly on almost any measure of visual management, you could still see on a tour that it wasn’t 100% perfect in its 5S compliance. In…
