Each month new articles, book reviews, and other content are added to the Superfactory website. The new content is featured in the free monthly e-newsletter which goes out to 50,000 subscribers worldwide, and we will also post a monthly heads-up on this blog.
New content in September includes:
The featured article is from James Cavalluzzi and is titled Lean Manufacturing: Are You Ready? The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire article here.
LEAN MANUFACTURING”, you hear it everywhere, everyday, you can’t escape it, but what is it? We all have our ideas, however, if you haven’t been formally trained or deeply involved, odds are, you’re thinking only of the cost savings side. Think back when ISO became all the rage. The basic understanding was that we would hire a quality engineer, put some standards and checklists in place, and magically, all our problems would be solved. In a short amount of time and with a reasonably small budget; our defects would vanish, our lead times and inventories would shrink, the customers would beat a path to our doors, and our profits would soar. Company after company embraced the concept, and a considerable percentage of those companies soon abandoned it as too costly and time consuming when compared to the immediate financial returns.
The Featured Blog Post is Craig Woll's recent piece titled What is Your Training Threshold. The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire post here.
So to create an analogy from the example above let us assume that each ton of seed is equivalent to 30 minutes of training and the plot of land is our brain. It is easy to speculate that if 30 minutes of training on a task leads to a 10% increase in knowledge then 60 minutes of training on a task will lead to a 20% increase in knowledge in the same training session. If no other variables change beyond the length of the training session, it is probably more likely that there will only be a 15% total increase in knowledge. If you increase the training session length by an additional 30 minutes you may only increase the total knowledge transfer to 17% and so on.
The featured book this month is Chain Reaction: How Today's Best Companies Manage Their Supply Chain by Robert Malone. The following is a brief summary, and you can learn more or order the book by
The rise of Wal-Mart, Dell, IKEA, IBM, UPS, and FedEx has changed the way consumers and businesses function in America. This book takes a look at the successes of these companies and shows how these very different businesses have all come to the same basic plan, leading them to become dominant in their industry. Malone argues that success in business is based upon an aggressive and intelligent supply chain strategy. He contends that the most effective business logistics today allow a business to manufacture, distribute, and sell on demand, and he shows in detail how superpower companies have mastered the strategy. This is a change from the historical “push” strategy – manufacturing and marketing as many products as possible and pushing them to the wholesaler, retailer and consumer to a “pull” strategy. This new demand-driven and synchronized supply chain is tailored for the new and aggressive business practice of the future.
We continually update the other major sections of the website, including:
- Events Calendar: a listing of lean excellence seminars, workshops, training, and conferences worldwide
- Topic Information: Summaries and resources on over 40 enterprise excellence topics.
- History of Excellence: A growing timeline of notable events that helped shape current-day enterprise excellence
- Online E-Learning Center: Fourteen interactive online presentations on the core concepts of lean manufacturing.
- PowerPoint Presentations: Over 50 downloadable PowerPoint presentations on lean manufacturing, quality, enterprise, and safety concepts.
- Factory Toolbox: Almost 300 downloadable forms, procedure templates, assessments, and tools to help you not reinvent the wheel.
- Tools and Assessments: Downloadable assessment tools.
- Virtual Factory Tours: Web and streaming video tours of over 100 factories.
We are always looking for new articles and other content. Contact us via the Superfactory website if you would like to contribute to our knowledge base.