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but they are related.

As this article reports, we still don’t have enough of either.

From the article: “A rebound anytime soon is unlikely as manufacturers in the ISM survey mostly described inventories as bloated.
“This implies the goods sector overestimated demand and production could slow further in the next few months, though that too could reflect lingering strike effects if auto parts piled up when production was idled,” said Will Compernolle, macro strategist at FHN Financial in New York.”

Back in the fall, I started a “How to Get Started in Lean” series for Plastics Machinery and Manufacturing.  I’ve posted my first two installments (links below).  I’m working to make these an easy to follow, step-by-step guide.   They’re posted in a plastics journal, of course, but they’ll be relevant to any manufacturing firm.

How to Get Started in Lean: Part 1

How to Get Started in Lean: Part 2

Yep, I changed things around a bit here and splashed on a new look.  It’s a bit cleaner and (I hope) a bit better organized.  I hope it suits.

From time to time, in my posts, I’ll mention books I’ve read.  I also do book reviews.  Generally, I provide links to Amazon in case a reader wants to purchase the book right then and there.  Well, it turns out that, by joining with Amazon affiliate program, I can get a small commission (4% up to 10%) whenever somebody does this. I figure I’ll make about $10 a year this way…if I’m lucky.  But I also figure there’s no downside.

Why do I bother to mention this?  If I’m making money from something you do (buying a book from Amazon), you should know about it.

OK, that’s it for barely relevant news…back to the good stuff.

One of my first “top to bottom, front to back lean initiative” clients was Talan Products here in Cleveland.

Looks like I didn’t mess them up too badly.

I’m putting together a workshop in Workplace Organization and Visual Factory (aka 5S….but I’m not crazy about the term 5S because, like so much of  lean jargon, it doesn’t really tell me anything).  I’m always looking for good photos of  WOVF examples.  True, there are lots at my own clients but I get shy about asking permission and all that.  So, I go looking across the web for photos.

I just found a good batch of photos at 5S Best Practices.  Check them out, especially if, like me, you need good examples like these to show others what WOVF is all about.

 

I took care of the backlog of “spam comments”.  You’re good to go, so comment away.

You know, I get hundreds of comments to the posts I write here.  (At the moment, theres a backlog of more than 1400 comments.)  The problem is, all of them (so far as I can tell) are spam.

That means that there might be a few legitimate comments that I’m not seeing that aren’t getting posted because I don’t want to wade through the backlog.  Especially given that, within a few days, it would be right back where it is now.

I’m going to figure this out eventually (I think there’s a way of attaching one of those Captcha widgets that make you type in the fuzzy numbers), but until then, you probably won’t see your comment below a post.

I’m always eager to hear what you have to say, though, so, for the time being,  use the contact page anytime you just have to respond to a post.

You’ll notice I’ve changed the name of the blog to Lean Manufacturing Update. The reason is shamelessy commercial…I’m hoping it shows up better in web searches. After all, if you were looking for info on “lean manufacturing”, would it occur to you to search on “agile manufacturing”? Exactly.

I still like the term “agile” better than I do “lean”. But I hope I’ll get to say that to more people by changing the name of my blog.

I used to have this blog on the regular Godaddy blog software.  They bagged the blogging business, pretty much leaving me in the lurch.  So now I’m on WordPress, hosted by Godaddy (I’m still trying to figure it all out).  The worst part about it all…I lost all my previous content.  Yeah.  All of it.  I had some good stuff there, too.

I’m not sure if it was my fault for not doing…something, or Godaddy’s fault for not telling me to do something.  Or maybe there wasn’t anything  that could be done, I forget.

I did this series on how to implement lean, step-by-step, that I was always proud of.  It was well received (if the Godaddy site stats were to be believed).  I’m going to do it again because, well, again, it’s good material and because I’ve updated my approach.

So, come back here every so often and see what I’ve added.