The Challenge Missing the deadline to process warranty claims means automatic approval and money lost—and Marel had missed the deadline for 13 of the last 18 months. Marel, a leading food processing equipment manufacturer, had been missing their customer-promised 60-day timeline in 13 of the last 18 months. When they…
What do you know about Sakichi Toyoda? Did you know he was born on Valentine’s Day? That he started out in the textile business? That he came up with the 5 Whys root cause guessing game? Oh, and that he founded Toyota Industries Company!? This year would have marked Sakichi…
Traditionally, everyone in the process improvement world references the Seven Basic Quality Tools which were promoted by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa back in the 1950s. Dr. Ishikawa was influenced by Dr. Deming, another quality great, and these are still a very good set of quality tools. But times have changed and…
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That’s my favorite aphorism that sums up the reality of unintended consequences. Those ripple effects from our best efforts that we had no idea would happen. Of course, unlike the proverb, not all ripple effects are bad. The term “happy accidents”…
In the early 1980s there was a countrywide failure of computer tape drives. The tape drives were all made by IBM, they were crashing in large and small businesses alike and no one knew why. This was a big problem for business and definitely a big problem for IBM. We’ll…
Here are our top picks for Lean Six Sigma success stories and news from around the web for the week of January 4, 2016. The Dallas CPE: Planning, Management and Continuous Improvement Enhance Service Delivery The city of Dallas, Texas integrated five different management tools under one umbrella to create a…
You may already know that Lean creates value for customers by eliminating waste. But did you also know that Lean can create value in your daily and personal life by helping you to recognize what’s a waste of your time and to help you be more productive? Leading organizations use…
Process improvement is a bit like detective work. You have the DMAIC method, but you also need to follow the clues. These are 3 cautionary tales about what can happen if you don’t clarify your customers’ true needs before trying to deliver on their requirements. We’ll let you in on…