Each month new articles, book reviews, and other content are added to the Superfactory website. The new content is featured in the monthly e-newsletter which goes out to 50,000 subscribers worldwide, and we will also post a monthly heads-up on this blog.
New content in July includes:
The featured article is from Michael Balle and is titled Who Teaches the Teachers? The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire article here.
I was recently walking through a factory shop floor that was
essentially a machining shop (20-odd mills, drills and turns of varying
age and design) with one small assembly cell stuck at the end of the
hall. In this cell, the local lean team had worked very hard at
implementing all the lean tools and improved quality, productivity and
eliminated WIP by going to single piece flow. They were still
struggling with regular supply in small containers, for the usual
organizational issues with logistics. This was not bad at all,
considering the general panic about 20% lower volumes than at this
point last year. They’d managed to reduce headcount faster than falling
demand, and to do so without traumatizing the operators, who had
participated actively to the “lean implementation.”
The featured book this month is Follow the Learner by Sami Bahri. The following is a brief summary, click here for more information.
'What does it really mean to be a learning organization? What does it
take to get the people in a nonmanufacturing environment to think of
work in terms of flow? How do you build a culture based on lean
principles and lead that culture as it continuously evolves? Dr. Sami
Bahri describes how he and the staff in his dental practice tackled
each of these questions. The book describes how their organization
transformed their work and their thinking from a traditional batch
approach to one focused directly on the needs of the patient, not on
the needs of the practitioners. It explains the technical changes that
they made in the way that they scheduled and treated patients, as well
as the understanding of the human interactions needed to make this new
model succeed.
Gemba Academy has released several new modules in their School of Lean: the 7 Wastes course and the first modules of the Quick Changeover course. Take a look at how Gemba Academy is revolutionizing online training, on demand, in High Definition HD quality.
We continually update the other major sections of the website, including:
- 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.
- Events Calendar: a listing of lean excellence seminars, workshops, training, and conferences worldwide
- Topic Information: Summaries and resources on over 40 enterprise excellence topics.
- Virtual Factory Tours: Web and streaming video tours of over 100 factories.
For all you LinkedIn junkies, we have created a LinkedIn group for Superfactory, which now has over 2,000 members. Join the group to
network with other Superfactory enthusiasts and to show our logo on your profile. If you haven't explored LinkedIn, check it out to see why over 17 million professionals use it for networking.
We are always looking for new articles and other content. Contact us via the Superfactory website if you would like to contribute to our knowledge base.