Flow Manufacturing -- What Went Right, What Went Wrong
Flow Manufacturing -- What Went Right, What Went Wrong

Author: Richard J. Schonberger

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-11-12

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 0429778201

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This book tells 101 stories of company efforts to implement the many aspects of flow manufacturing -- including such topics as just-in-time production, total quality control, reorganization of factories into product-focused or customer-focused cells, plants-in-a-plant, material flows by the simplicity of visual kanban, supplier partnerships, quick setup of equipment, cross-training and job rotation of the work force, and many more. The 101 mini-case studies – dubbed "caselets" -- include 26 non-U.S. companies from 12 countries and cover a wide swath of industrial sectors, and include many well-known corporations such as Apple, Campbell Soup, Honeywell, and Boeing. From the 1980s to the present, the author has been taking the message of process improvement and customer-focused excellence far and wide. Most of these travels, usually in connection with delivering a seminar, include brief factory tours in which he compiled detailed notes and then organized them as brief reports — his unvarnished analysis or take on what they do well and what needs improvement. In the main the reports were then sent back to the hosts of the plant tour. These factory tours and these follow-up reports form the basis of the large majority of this book’s caselets. Many of the caselets bring to life process-improvement methodologies in detail. With lots of caselets to draw from, the readers will find vivid examples of similar companies and processes within their respective industries. For example, the caselets often include applications of advanced concepts in cost management, employee training, performance management, supply chains, and logistics as well as applications of plant layout, quick setup, material handling, quality assurance, scheduling, ergonomics, and flow analysis.

Lean Thinking
Lean Thinking

Author: James P. Womack

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-09-26

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1471111008

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Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Why Startups Fail
Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0593137027

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If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Creating Continuous Flow
Creating Continuous Flow

Author: Mike Rother

Publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute

Published: 2001-12

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 0966784332

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This workbook explains in simple, step-by-step terms how to introduce and sustain lean flows of material and information in pacemaker cells and lines, a prerequisite for achieving a lean value stream.A sight we frequently encounter when touring plants is the relocation of processing steps from departments (process villages) to product-family work cells, but too often these "cells" produce only intermittent and erratic flow. Output gyrates from hour to hour and small piles of inventory accumulate between each operation so that few of the benefits of cellularization are actually being realized; and, if the cell is located upstream from the pacemaker process, none of the benefits may ever reach the customer.This sequel to Learning to See (which focused on plant level operations) provides simple step-by-step instructions for eliminating waste and creating continuous flow at the process level. This isn't a workbook you will read once then relegate to the bookshelf. It's an action guide for managers, engineers, and production associates that you will use to improve flow each and every day.Creating Continuous Flow takes you to the next level in work cell design where you'll achieve even greater cost and lead time savings. You'll learn: where to focus your continuous flow efforts, how to create much more efficient work cells and lines, how to operate a pacemaker process so that a lean value stream is possible, how to sustain the gains, and keep improving.Creating Continuous Flow is the next logical step after Learning to See. The value-stream mapping process defined the pacemaker process and the overall flow of products and information in the plant. The next step is to shift your focus from the plant to the process level by zeroing in on the pacemaker process, which sets the production rhythm for the plant or value stream, and apply the principles of continuous flow.Every production facility has at least one pacemaker process. The pacemaker processes is usually where products take their final form before going to external customers. It’s called the pacemaker because how you operate here determines both how well you can serve the customer and what the demand pattern is like for your upstream supplying processes.How the pacemaker process operates is critically important. A steady and consistently flowing pacemaker places steady and consistent demands on the rest of the value stream. The continuous flow processing that results allows companies to create leaner value streams.[Source : 4e de couv.]