Building a culture of continuous improvement requires an establishment of fundamental knowledge among those in the quality control department. Speaking intelligently on the subject assumes your team knows the main players credited with founding Lean and Six Sigma methodologies. Looking into the midst of antiquity there were many notable contributors that should be mentioned with […] Read more

Cost of Poor Quality is a collection of operational losses that is associated with the provision of poor quality products or services. In some instances, the customer will either outright reject the product, leaving the organization to either scrap or rework the product, or will accept the product at a reduced price. Regardless of the […] Read more

Lean Methodology One of the methods put into place by Toyota Manufacturing in Japan many years ago, is called Heijunka. This is a Japanese word meaning ‘leveling’. The Toyota Production System is the basis for Lean Manufacturing, which focuses on increasing efficiency and reducing waste in manufacturing. Heijunka is used to smooth out unpredictable customer […] Read more

This article aims to dissect and facilitate the analysis of the five core lean principles. The principles that will be focused on, were originated by the Lean Principles Institute. Organizations aim to continuously improve, and the lean mindset is something that tends to be adopted as employees enter a workforce, and not something that is […] Read more

Image 1: Project Management Phases Project Management activities are a finite set of activities dedicated to a particular outcome. The project management process consists of five main sequential activities which are adopted at the differing phases of project activities. This article aims to dissect the stages of project management, into manageable digestible concepts, to help […] Read more

Continuous Improvement Activities are a subset of Operational Excellence Activities, which enable an organization to optimize its operations and become a better supplier to its customers. In any organization, there is a drive to be the best there is, because other similar entities are after the same target. Providing the highest value for the lowest […] Read more

Operational Excellence involves those key strategic activities that will facilitate consistent product or service quality delivery to an organization’s desired customer base. With single organizations not being the only suppliers to customers, it is in their best interest to ensure that they are delivering their product or service with a high standard. In order to […] Read more

The 5S method is something I feel is subconsciously understood by most people. After all, it’s how we clean, it’s how we’ve learned to clean from our parents and what we were constantly pestered through our youth to do. But I also feel like people also subconsciously reject 5S methods, usually out of laziness. Around […] Read more

The Kano Model of customer satisfaction is an interesting and intuitive tool for just about any kind of business. It’s not something I formally learned about until about a year ago, but learning it felt more like discovering something that had been around me all along than learning any sort of new process, opening my […] Read more

SMED is a system, more of a philosophy, designed to reduce changeover time on equipment. Designed by Shigeo Shinjo, when properly implemented it has been shown to reduce changeover times by 94% (as an example, something that previously took an hour would take less than 4 minutes to complete). While this may seem like an […] Read more

Strategic planning is one of the most important factors in a project running smoothly and ending successfully. It is also sadly neglected or misused far, far too often. What is strategic planning? Simply put, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You plan your overall medium to long term strategy for a project or business, refine […] Read more