Author Archive

Jim Huntzinger: Jidoka: the TPS house collapses without it By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Thursday, August 12, 2010

Art Smalley and the others give great explanations about Jidoka so I won’t add too much in light of their responses, other than comment that either pillar (JIT and Jidoka) cannot exist without the other without the roof of the TPS House model collapsing.  As Art states – they are equally important to the system. From my experience here are examples and how Jidoka manifested itself…. (Note:  Let me qualify this by stating that I don’t mean this to be any definitive definition, solution, or end-all of Jidoka – just examples I was involved with as I implemented and learned over the ...

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Jim Huntzinger: Right-Designing: Freeing up Kaizen Capacity By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

My response is not necessarily kaizen in complete context, but I will address a certain aspect which, unfortunately, consumes a significant amount of kaizen effort. I am assuming several assumptions – clear objectives already existing or are being processed – customer requirements in volume, features, and functions.  And that the process, as articulated by Mike Rother in Kata (current condition and target condition – reference Mike’s slideshare referenced in his post) is what is driving the overarching work of the manufacturing engineers I address below. While TWI is a great structure to develop kaizen and a daily and normal function structure, it ...

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Jim Huntzinger: Innovation, The Scientific Method By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Sunday, May 16, 2010

I see applying lean and innovation as one in the same. While innovation seem to be commonly thought of spontaneously emerging from some mad scientist-type locked in some secret lab somewhere, most innovation actually comes from a much more mundane source.  And in a lean environment it certainly does come from a common source.  And this source is operators, supervisors, engineers, and managers. Since innovation is most often an evolutionary and iterative process, it is critical to have a structure which, not only helps people to behave and think in this manner, but one that also gives them the infrastructure to physically ...

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Jim Huntzinger: Quality Is In The People By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Tuesday, April 13, 2010

As Mr. Micklewright points out one of the aspects of the lean business model is increasing productivity and efficiency – this is often the focus of many lean programs (program, unfortunately, instead of a business model).  This aspect is manifested in developing and implementing flow.  But quality is directly linked to flow, and this link is all too often missed, or ignored. In order to maintain good flow – that is constant and consistent flow (and ideally one-piece flow) – certain outcomes have to happen, and not just by circumstance; uptime on equipment, no long changeovers, consistent supply of the right ...

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