New at Superfactory - March 2007

Each month new articles, book reviews, and other content are added to the

.  The new content is featured in the free

which goes out to 50,000 subscribers worldwide, and we will also post a monthly heads-up on this blog.

New content in March includes:

The featured article is from regular contributor and Shingo Prize winner Bob Emiliani, and is titled Gaining Executive Buy-In for Lean.  The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire article here.

Gaining executive buy-in for process improvement activities has been a major challenge for over 100 years. Taking a trip back in time to see how an experienced improvement engineer handled this problem can provide useful insights for today's challenges.  In 1914, Charles E. Knoeppel wrote a series of articles in The Engineer Magazine that focused on the actual practice of putting efficiency methods into place in a typical manufacturing business. The series of articles was very popular, and three years later they were expanded and published as a book titled Installing Efficiency Methods.

The Other Perspectives section has the third in a four part series by Don Kivell titled Sustaining Lean: Effective Audits.  The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire article here.

In my last column I discussed the benefits of Kaizen blitzes in sustaining lean. In particular, we saw how valuable these events are in teaching employees to constantly think about how they might make their work areas more efficient. This time I want to talk to you about audits. Audits also help manufacturers sustain lean, and in addition they provide an excellent way of determining if past suggestions have been acted upon and improvements made, or if they've been neglected, contributing to waste. Done well, audits are the ultimate measuring stick. Done poorly, they are next to useless.

The featured book for this month is Quick Changeover Simplified: The Manager's Guide to Improving Profits with SMED by Fletcher Birmingham and Jim Jelinek.  A short synopsis is below, and you can learn more about the book or order it

.

The authors will walk you through the process of implementing a mini setup reduction program with some quick changeover tools and concepts that won't overwhelm you. When you start seeing the results and you're ready to implement a full-scale program, they'll take you through an eight-step process that's easy to understand. This compelling book is a quick start guide that is concise and easy read. Written for those who understand the benefits of SMED but don't know how to start. Designed so that you can read it when you have only a few minutes to spare. Distinctive in that all the examples, including the ROI statistics, are real --companies have successfully used all the strategies and tools discussed.

We continually update the other major sections of the website, including:

• Events Calendar: a listing of lean excellence seminars, workshops, training, and conferences worldwide
• Topic Information: Summaries and resources on over 40 enterprise excellence topics.
• History of Excellence: A growing timeline of notable events that helped shape current-day enterprise excellence
• PowerPoint Presentations: Over 50 downloadable PowerPoint presentations on lean manufacturing, quality, enterprise, and safety concepts.
• Factory Toolbox: Almost 300 downloadable forms, procedure templates, assessments, and tools to help you not reinvent the wheel.
• Tools and Assessments: Downloadable assessment tools.
• Virtual Factory Tours: Web and streaming video tours of over 100 factories.

We are always looking for new articles and other content.  Contact us via the

if you would like to contribute to our knowledge base.