Tag: Manufacturing

Manufacturing Leadership, Lean Systems, and Continuous Improvement

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.

Onshoring

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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...

The Chinese Auto Industry

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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...

Lean Factory Design Part 3

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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...

Lean Factory Design Part 2

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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...

Lean Factory Design Part 1

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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...

You Get What You Inspect: A NUMMI Lesson in Lean Leadership

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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...

Why Toyota Knows Perfection Is Impossible: A NUMMI Lesson

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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...

How Toyota Used a Pull System in a NUMMI Gift Shop

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NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator?NUMMI Tour Tale #2: The Power of Reynolds WrapNUMMI Tour Tale #3: The Power of Why Back to...

Why Toyota Explains “Why”: A NUMMI Lesson in Respect for People

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NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator?NUMMI Tour Tale #2: The Power of Reynolds Wrap I think, by now, that Toyota is pretty famous...

How a Simple Kaizen Idea at NUMMI Saved Hours of Work

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NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator? The NUMMI tour guide told an interesting kaizen story as we went past the body weld area....

Why Toyota Didn’t Fix an Escalator: A NUMMI Lesson in Lean...

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I really enjoyed my tour of the NUMMI plant last Friday. I'll post my summary thoughts and impressions from the tour, but I wanted...

NUMMI opens new training facility at plant

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Milpitas Post - LocalI saw the plant on Friday, it was pretty cool. Some excerpts from my visit notes are below, I should be...
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