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Paul Templin writes in his November 2009 IE column that employees can handle change much better if such news is shared through direct communication.
In the November 2009 IE, read about work by Kumar Rajaram and Zhili Tian supporting design optimization methods of semicontinuous processes in manufacturing.
Vinyltek in Vancouver, British Columbia, has seen its sales doubled over three years, but was it ready for such demand? In this case study from the December issue of Industrial Engineer, read how Vinyltek's president looked to an old colleague for help in a new lean strategy.
A L'Oreal cosmetics plant in Little Rock, Ark., is marking 100 years of its parent company's business by increasing productivity through lean manufacturing, kaizen, 5S and other IE management
tools. It's a strategy that the international company could likely implement across the map.
In this expanded version of a case study featured in the October issue of Industrial Engineer magazine, a product assembly manager at a Bosch Rexroth facility in Lancaster, Pa., discusses recent lean transformations applied to the production of "future-proof" security technology.
This feature from the October issue of Industrial Engineer examines the impact of decision analysis on how industrial engineers can better inform or educate customers, so that they have something more to show than just a bunch of numbers.
Paul Templin provides five rules for using statistical process control in his August IE column.
WIKA Instrument Corp.'s Lawrenceville, Ga., facility is a shining example of nearly a decade of lean transformation. Read about how this German-based company uses lean to survive today's turbulent economy.
Have you ever wondered why it takes so long to become proficient in lean methods? Author Rick Duncan, a lean process engineer working for Amylin Pharmaceutical LLC, explains how to set up lean operations in the startup of a new manufacturing facility.
Learn how to map the process flow and identify activities that add value from the customer’s perspective in this three-day intro course beginning Sept. 30.
WIKA Instrument Corp.’s Lawrenceville, Ga., facility is a shining example of nearly a decade of lean transformation.
Occupational expert Lawrence Shatkin asserts that industrial engineering is one of 15 professions that will benefit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in his book, Great Jobs in the President's Stimulus Plan.
The Juran Institute’s Steven Doerman describes how companies can map themselves into good position after the economic recovery using lean principles.
In this interview with IIE, manufacturing journalist Thomas Cutler addresses scheduling one-of-a-kind products and projects in engineering-to-order environments.
Blogger Joe Ely ponders the lack of common sense at an auto supply store.
Merwan Mehta, an associate professor in the technology systems department at East Carolina University, describes how activity efficiency (AE) can help balance a process and help balance a team.
Author Bill George’s seven lessons for leading organizations through major crisis
Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Center for Maintenance Optimization and Reliability Engineering (C-MORE) describe how asset manager can make optimal maintenance decisions.
The employees of Stiles Associates mix football metaphors with lean methods to mange its day-to-day operations.
One of three companies to earn a Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award in 1988, the year that the awards program was established, Motorola Inc. turned judges' heads with a ten-fold improvement initiative of zero defects in its products and services worldwide.
In his May IE column, Paul Templin describes how manufacturing must be a team sport.
Leading lean and quality expert Elizabeth Cudney constructs a complete how-to guide that any organization can employ to start a lean effort correctly and keep it on track.
Engineer-to-order challenges for the industrial engineer
Most leaders do a pretty good job of talking about the need to be lean, and approving training dollars for learning about lean tools, but are these same leaders trying to make their own leadership systems as lean as they could be?
For Garlock Sealing Technologies, facilities planning meant as much to the community as it did to the company.
Lean and Six Sigma are the two of today’s most popular business improvement approaches.
This free webinar details key success factors for integrating lean and Six Sigma in a health care setting.
Buffer placement and simulation improve a production line for a cake packager.
As a result of increasing focus on lean in competitive manufacturing, maintenance management has found a new vigor and purpose to increase equipment capacity and capability. This paper develops a value stream map for maintenance to evaluate the non-value-added activities.
John Wilson, an industrial engineering supervisor for Boston Scientific Corp., shows that value stream maps start and end at customer satisfaction.
Effective use of programs such as lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and OEE (overall equipment efficiency) yields results that are too valuable to ignore. But where do you start?
Changing a manufacturing system from push to pull production control, while ultimately beneficial, can be disruptive. This paper studies the transition process in a single-stage manufacturing system.
LFD was developed to fill the need for a method that determines the lean implementation point using customer needs in determining process steps. Researchers tested the effectiveness of an LFD tool and developed a computer program to show the real-world application of the proposed tool.
Cintas Corp.’s clean room laundry facility outside of Detroit is equipped with process isolation control that allows for simultaneous, linear batch lot flow of clean room garments.
VSM is an important technique used in lean manufacturing. See how one researcher developed a simulation model template for VSM to help validate the findings of mapping efforts.
Organizations continue to seek innovative ideas for improving their processes and retaining a competitive edge. Kaizen focuses on improving a work area or an organization in incremental steps.
Professor Adedeji Badiru describes how partnerships, specifically the concept of extrapreneurships, will keep manufacturers’ doors open.
Quality icons Shigeo Shingo and Mikel Harry make extreme and opposite claims about the right approach to quality improvement. Shingo has no use for statistical methods while Harry believes they are indispensable. This author contends that they are both correct in their non-overlapping universes.
Industries as diverse as health care and construction, not to mention all manner of manufacturers, have proven that the lean philosophy is applicable and beneficial to them. But government agencies have distinct differences that make them a challenging opportunity to apply lean principles.
IE columnist Paul Templin contemplates the future of U.S.-based technology workers in manufacturing.
This essay deals with the economic impact of production and manufacturing operations while making product with the existing process. The bottom line is that most production processes are underutilized, and the use of mature, accessible mathematical technology unlocks that latent capacity, which is of significant value.
Today’s customers have come to expect world-class quality in the goods and services they purchase. The management of diversity is essential for creating an environment in which people from different walks of life can come together as a unified team to produce world-class quality.
For Kahiki Foods Inc., a manufacturer of Asian-themed frozen foods for North America, lean transformation leaves a great taste.
A couple of years ago, Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, a staff writer with the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), featured the activities of IIE’s Lean Division in PE magazine to share our story with NSPE’s members. NSPE has kindly consented to having us reprint the article for the benefit of our own membership.
There is a law regarding variability in production management that increasing the variability in workflow always degrades the performance of a production system. Understanding its implications in projects and creating predictable workflow is the way to start improving project performance.
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