Operational Excellence Tools Blog : kaizen

www.kanban.com is now live

LeanTeam — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:11:00 GMT

Ultriva has launched their hosted, subscription based eKanban service at www.kanban.com. It's a .NET enabled online service for small to medium sized manufacturers to better align inventory and production with actual customer demand. It includes a wizard-based interface making it very easy to use. This service could democratize the transition from push-based, forecasting based business models to pull-based, customer demand oriented business models for manufacturers that otherwise might not be able to afford a full blown enterprise scale collaborative electronic kanban solution.

Ultriva User's Conference highlights

LeanTeam — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:52:00 GMT

In Cupertino, CA today at the Ultriva User's Conference listening to a many customer case study presentations from Emerson Electric, Rexnord, and Dover Inc. What is most compelling in the talks is why each company is using Lean. OK International started on their Lean journey in 2001 to improve customer responsiveness. They've moved delivery times from 6 weeks to 2 weeks using a Lean approach. In fact, OKI never even did manual kanban. They went directly to eKanban to enable that change. OKI discovered Ultriva because one of their top suppliers was also a supplier to Emerson Electric which uses Ultriva. They told OKI that they are a lousy customer and they should seriously consider eKanban from Ultriva. That was one of the main reasons why OKI went directly to eKanban knowing the results Emerson was getting.

Emerson's goal is to have all 31,000 suppliers onto the Ultriva eKanban system by end of September 2008. Emerson is using a shared services IT model to support the roll-out. This helps them integrate with the variety of MRP systems in use around the world. Emerson's roll-out is very ambitious. They are doing supplier kanban, customer kanban, and internal kanban. Schedule-based replenishment is on the horizon.

IndustryWeek webcast on Enterprise Value Stream Mapping & Analysis

LeanTeam — Sat, 05 May 2007 00:01:00 GMT

On May 31st, Lockheed Martin will be conducting a webcast hosted by IndustryWeek. Lockheed Martin apparently has transformed their entire approach to conducting kaizen events through the use of software tools like LeanView from the Orlando Software Group. The registration site is http://www.industryweek.com/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=342&ref=MIC2.

A refreshing outlook on 'New Millennium' Lean

LeanTeam — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:37:00 GMT

USC Consulting Group (www.usccg.com) has written a very thorough whitepaper describing how technology augments traditional Lean methods, but also argues that technology is a requirement to make a full Lean transformation. The link to the document is http://www.usccg.com/Ref/USCMillenniumBroch.pdf.

Interesting post about kaizen for Windows

LeanTeam — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:21:00 GMT

...talking about designing the machine around the process and not vice versa, from Gemba Panta Rei at http://www.gembapantarei.com/2007/02/standard_work_needed_for_use_o.html.

I know there are numerous improvement efforts in the product groups at Microsoft focused on the type of improvements mentioned in this post, some of which, as mentioned, have come to light in Vista and Office 2007. Hopefully some of the posts in this blog will help elucidate some of the ways the new technology has improved, but comments and suggestions are always welcome.

- Marc from the Lean Team

Emerson is tackling inventory turns with technology

LeanTeam — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:08:00 GMT

Check out the IndustryWeek webcast from January called Emerson Lean: From Strategy to Execution. It's presented by Ray Keefe, VP of Manufacturing at Emerson and Ashley Stirrup, CEO of Ultriva. What is especially insightful is how Emerson has figured out how to tackle the "bullwhip" issue. The recording is available at

http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=34065&s=1&k=6C52E41DBC0181EF537FCFE2BFD2DD78.

How Software Can Help Your Lean Program – and You, the Lean Professional

LeanTeam — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:05:00 GMT

There is nothing like walking into the “war room” after a kaizen event. I usually see the same thing - butcher paper and sticky notes lining the walls from floor to ceiling. It is the result of people coming together to improve their value streams – the scene is impressive. What I’m less impressed with is what teams do after this event...

I see well-educated, highly trained professionals sitting about six inches from the wall with their laptops hammering in all of the financial and operational data they recorded into Excel and mapping out the value stream in Visio. Sometimes they use a common format, sometimes they don’t. Then they take all of this data, do some “standard” analysis work, and create a management outbrief in Powerpoint. When I ask how long that effort takes, I get answers anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the size and complexity of the value stream, and how many resources are assigned.

To me, this is waste. The work is repetitive, it should be standardized, and people who get paid to solve problems and implement improvements should spend as little time as possible on it.

This is where software comes in…

Software can help streamline the time it takes to enter the data, and automate the repetitive analysis and reporting aspects of this process. You may have already tried to solve this by building something internally, or you may have poked around to see what is out there.

I am fortunate to work closely with a partner that builds a solution for lean professionals. The Orlando Software Group provides a product build on top of the Microsoft Office platform called LeanView.

If you can relate to the above scenario…take 5 minutes and check out their online flash demo: http://www.osgi.com/leanview/lvdemo/index2.php?rid=4.

I’d love your feedback…

-Brian Willson

Microsoft Lean Team