“They need a conveyor,” said the guy on my left as we observed the assembly process. Operators walked back and forth from the assembly station to bring finished parts to the shelf and to get ...

In the 1990s while first learning about Japanese manufacturing and Toyota, I was also studying organizational development. A retired University of Michigan researcher, Lawrence Lippitt, ran a monthly ...

Companies adopting a Lean philosophy strive to remove or shorten time spent on activities that the customer doesn’t value. For example, although steps like estimating and makeready are thought of as ...

Every business is unique. For most, simply adopting a single, prescribed approach is a risky move. In the case of Six Sigma, it can be especially tempting to, seeing the success of major companies ...

While lean theories were first designed for and implemented in manufacturing, it has proven effective in reducing costs and improving productivity in HVAC construction. Lean seeks to minimize ...

From the buildings we work in, the data centers we depend on, and especially in the machines we design, we inevitably rely on bolted joint connections. Unfortunately, due to the perceived simplicity ...