Lean Factory Design Part 1
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…
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.
You Get What You Inspect: A NUMMI Lesson in Lean Leadership
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…
Why Toyota Knows Perfection Is Impossible: A NUMMI Lesson
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…
How Toyota Used a Pull System in a NUMMI Gift Shop
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 stories about my tour of the Toyota/GM plant in Fremont CA. The NUMMI lobby has…
Why Toyota Explains “Why”: A NUMMI Lesson in Respect for People
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 for its “5 Whys” approach for root cause problem solving. Asking why five times, in…
How a Simple Kaizen Idea at NUMMI Saved Hours of Work
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. Car bodies are held and transported on metal carrier racks that recirculate through the welding…
Why Toyota Didn’t Fix an Escalator: A NUMMI Lesson in Lean Thinking
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 to post a few of the more interesting stories first. In a back part of the…
NUMMI opens new training facility at plant
Milpitas Post – Local I saw the plant on Friday, it was pretty cool. Some excerpts from my visit notes are below, I should be posting the whole thing soon: Before entering the Gemba, you walk past a “Simulated Work…
Touring NUMMI on Friday
I’m getting a chance to tour the NUMMI plant in Fremont CA, the joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. I’m very excited about it and will post some thoughts over the weekend. Anybody already been there and have perspectives…
Move pays off for aircraft parts manufacturer
Star-Telegram.com : Another lean case study, this time from a small company in Texas: “Employees manufacturing the same products are clustered together in work groups, with their supplies close at hand. Moving one work group of four people saved an…
How American Leather Reinvented the Upholstery Business
Virginia Postrel Article (NY Times article Feb 2005) Here is a great example of a company using lean to compete in the furniture industry, where most everything else is moving to China (or is already there). For anyone who has ever…
