A few of the thinkers and authors on this page have actually been in my operations, and I’ve used Michael’s The Lean Manager as required reading in our lean book club.  We’re a multi-site process (extrusion/molding) medical contract manufacturer, four or five years down a successful lean journey that has made us more agile and competitive, with great 5S, value stream organization, daily accountability, etc.   But one big struggle has been basic kaizen – creating the culture and finding the time.  Over the past couple years with help from Art Smalley we’ve successfully dived into TWI.  Now it seems like the JM side of TWI has created “our way” of doing kaizen – breaking down and reconstructing the job method prior to JI lets us remove wasteful steps.  Any thoughts on the pros and cons of this simply being our method of larger kaizen?  We do have some success with Bodek-style “quick and easy kaizen” with small changes.

Write a comment

You need to login to post comments!