In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficiency and productivity are paramount. Organizations strive to streamline their processes, eliminate waste, and optimize resource utilization. However, there’s a hidden culprit that often goes unnoticed – set-up time. The time it takes to prepare a machine, system, or workflow for production can be a significant source of waste. In this article, we will explore the various ways in which set-up time can lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, and reduced competitiveness for businesses. We’ll also discuss strategies to minimize set-up time and its associated waste.
Category Archives: Lean Six Sigma
Lean Wednesday Tip: Unstable Processes
“A process that is not under control or is unstable displays patterns of variation. Unstable processes have variation that is unpredictable; the magnitude of the variation could change from one time period to another.”
Lean Wednesday Tip: Variation in a process
“Sources of variation can be found in the process itself, the raw materials used, the operator’s (employee’s) actions or the environment. For example, software settings / updates, tool wear, humidity, heat, and over-adjusting a machine are all sources of variation.”
Lean Wednesday Tip: Variation
“Variation is attributed to what the customer sees and feels, including the best and worst performance of your product or service.”
Reasons for Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma allows for the improvement in speed and performance of a process coupled with the reduction of waste and defects. If you ever find your current processes with high rework, client turnover, product recalls/crashes, and a plethora of errors it might be time to change your process design. As you will read below,Continue reading “Reasons for Lean Six Sigma”
E.O.W(End of the Week) Notable Tip: Quality Costs
Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had a great week. Today, I want to discuss quality costs and how they affect your bottom line. “Quality costs can be found in prevention costs; detection costs (auditing), rework, scrap, downtime and material costs. “ Effective organizations know and pay close attention to their quality costs. They invest inContinue reading “E.O.W(End of the Week) Notable Tip: Quality Costs”
Lean Wednesday Tip: Value Driven Processes
“Processes should be value driven and measured and the results carefully analyzed to identify opportunities for improvement.”
Lean Wednesday Tip: Objectives of a Process Improvement Project
“The validity of a well-planned process improvement project is identified through value-added process mapping, problem isolation, root cause analysis and problem solution. Ultimately, the key to refining processes is to concentrate on the process from the customer’s point of view and identify and eliminate non-value added activities.”
Successfully Integrating Value Stream Mapping into Product Development
Whenever there is a new product or service being offered to customers, there is a new process and value stream. Value Streams include both non-value-added and value-added activities and are the actions required to create a product or service from raw material until it reaches the customer. Value Stream Maps are more detailed than processContinue reading “Successfully Integrating Value Stream Mapping into Product Development”
How to plan a Process Improvement Project
When planning a process improvement project the most important question you have to ask is, “What problem are we trying to solve?” This question relates directly to the first step in DMAIC ( a Lean Six Sigma problem solving tool), which is to define the problem. After you answer this question you are ready toContinue reading “How to plan a Process Improvement Project”
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