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What is the One Thing Your Staff Won’t Tell You?

26 May, 2012 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Mad Scientist

Imagine that you saw a newspaper advert.  It said that the psychology department at your local university was running a “memory study” and that it wanted paid volunteers for an hour-long experiment You were having a slack morning so you decided to give it a go At the laboratory you met two men; one, the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: back to the floor, gemba

Top 10 Process Mapping Sins

12 June, 2010 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Not being clear on the scope: how will you know when to stop? Not gaining buy in: whose back yard are you digging in? Not explaining what you are doing: at best staff will be suspicious, at worst they will turn nasty. (Positioning your work as a cost saving initiative is not going to help […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: back to the floor, gemba, jargon, process mapping

Silver Bullets

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Silver Bullet

We have a fascination with big bets, wholesale system change, outsourcing deals, new facilities.  We are rewarded for thinking strategically and pulling the big leavers; consequently we are always looking for silver bullets, the one change that will make everything more efficient. All operations are big machines that deal with materials, customers, employees and products.  […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: back to the floor, complexity, continuous improvement, cost saving, devil is in the detail, gemba

What Can You See?

17 January, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The manufacturing guys have a neat trick It is called an “Ohno circle”.  They paint them on the floor at different points in factories and then the team leader stands in the circle with a clip board for 30 minutes, writing down everything that he can see that doesn’t work.  He or she then spends […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Operations Analysis Tagged With: back to the floor, continuous improvement, gemba, manufacturing, ohno circle

Spies Like Us

28 December, 2009 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

I have reached that age when for Christmas I am given socks, chocolates and paperbacks. I am half way through this year’s crop of paperbacks and found this quote in a John le Carre novel. “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world” I learnt the same lesson working in a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: back to the floor, Christmas, gemba, manufacturing, monitoring

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