The man-machine system performance

When looking for performance improvement of a man-machine system, too often management puts emphasis onto machine or technology at large, ignoring the fact that humans associated with equipment, machines or technology form an interrelated system and consequently humans are the discriminating factor. The fallacy of trusting the latest technology There is a strong belief, backed …

Performance improvement: simple things can earn big results

Silly things can cost a lot in terms of productivity and output. In this video interview, Philip Marris asks me about lessons learnt while helping a pharmaceutical plant to improve productivity and deliver drugs to patients faster. It is about how simple actions solve those silly small problems and bring big results at literally no cost.

So many wasted data

In many organizations people capture a lot of data and... just ignore them, wasting their potential value. The latest case, at the moment I write this post, is with an aircraft MRO company. This post echoes a previous one: Trouble with manual data capture Every aircraft undergoing MRO requires a lot of mandatory paperwork for …

Four good reasons to take a break if you are to remain efficient

Deep involvement in a project, problem solving or coaching really drains one's energy. A periodic break is therefore mandatory in order to remain efficient. Here are four good reasons for it. 1. Recharge Everyone needs a breather now and then. The tenser the situation, the more the break is needed. Getting away some time from …

Measurement is the first improvement step

It’s a kind of magic and it works every time: setup some indicators to measure something and this very something will automatically start improving, without any other action. Well, it looks a kind of magic but is a very human trait. People pay attention, stick to the rules and behave from the moment they can …

Benchmarking is only trouble!

It happens periodically. When managers are faced with improvement challenge, they ask for benchmarks. Not because they’re eager to take it on competition but to check if by chance they’re not already better or at least good enough, thus escape the challenge. And this is only the beginning with trouble about Benchmarking. Benchmarking It is …

How Lean are you? Part 4

This is the fourth post in the How Lean are you? series. Measuring leanness In previous posts of this series I explained the advantage and necessity to assess leanness on two dimensions, one being primarily depicting how familiar with Lean tools and concepts people in the organization are, the second to measure tangible results: performance. …

How lean can help shaping the future ? Lean engineering

Before searching about new high-tech disruptive innovation* let us reflect how lean thinking and lean tools were used so far. *read my 'Technologies alone will not regain competitive advantage' post Every time an organization was exposed to lean concepts, those were used to improve the actual situation, resulting from decisions, practices and behaviors prior to …

How lean are you? Part 2

In previous post I described the lean awareness assessment, a relatively simple but not very effective way for assessing leanness. Its weak point is the assumption lean awareness and operational performance are correlated and this causation is taken for granted. While this assumption makes sense and may be true, experience shows that this cause-effect relationship …

How lean are you? Part 1

This is the first post of the "Lean assessment series" dedicated as its name tells to organizations' leaness assessment. One common and easy way to assess leanness is to check the organization's lean awareness. This is usually done using a five level scale ranging from "barely any knowledge" to "top awareness". Assessors use question grids …