1. Reduced Setup Times:
All setup practices are wasteful because they add no value and they tie up labor and equipment. By organizing procedures, using carts, and training workers to do their own setups, Toyota managed to slash setup times from months to hours and sometimes even minutes.
2. Small-Lot Production:
Producing things in large batches results in huge setup costs, high capital cost of high-speed dedicated machinery, larger inventories, extended lead times, and larger defect costs. Because Toyota has found the way to make setups short and inexpensive, it became possible for them to economically produce a variety of things in small quantities.
2. Employee Involvement and Empowerment:
Toyota organized their workers by forming teams and gave them the responsibility and training to do many specialized tasks. Teams are also given responsibility for housekeeping and minor equipment repair. Each team has a leader who also works as one of them on the line.
4. Quality at the Source:
To eliminate product defects, they must be discovered and corrected as soon as possible. Since workers are at the best position to discover a defect and to immediately fix it, they are assigned this responsibility. If a defect cannot be readily fixed, any worker can halt the entire line by pulling a cord (called Jidoka).
5. Equipment Maintenance:
Toyota operators are assigned primary responsibility for basic maintenance since they are in the best position to defect signs of malfunctions. Maintenance specialists diagnose and fix only complex problems, improve the performance of equipment, and train workers in maintenance.
6. Pull Production:
To reduce inventory holding costs and lead times, Toyota developed the pull production method wherein the quantity of work performed at each stage of the process is dictated solely by demand for materials from the immediate next stage. The Kamban scheme coordinates the flow of small containers of materials between stages. This is where the term Just-in-Time (JIT) originated.
7. Supplier Involvement:
Toyota treats its suppliers as partners, as integral elements of Toyota Production System (TPS). Suppliers are trained in ways to reduce setup times, inventories, defects, machine breakdowns etc., and take responsibility to deliver their best possible parts.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Introduction to Six Sigma
Pioneered at Motorola in the mid-1980s, Six Sigma was initially targeted to quantify the defects occurred during manufacturing processes, and to reduce those defects to a very small level. Motorola claimed to have saved several million dollars. Another very popular success was at GE. Six Sigma contributed over US $ 300 million to GE’s 1997 operating income.
Originally, Six Sigma was defined as a metric for measuring defects and improving quality; and a methodology to reduce defect levels below 3.4 Defects Per (one) Million Opportunities (DPMO). Six Sigma is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola, Inc who has reported over US$17 billion savings from Six Sigma to date.
Six Sigma has now grown beyond defect control. It can be defined as a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects, defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target; and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate those defects. The objective of Six Sigma is to deliver world-class performance, reliability, and value to the end customer.
It is important to recall that every customer always values consistent and predicable services and/or products with near zero defects. Therefore they experience the variation and not the mean. Mean is their expectation or our target.
If we can measure process variations that cause defects i.e. unacceptable deviation from the mean or target, we can work towards systematically managing the variation to eliminate defects. It is implemented via two potential scenarios - (a) there is already an existing process(s) that is working “reasonably” well and (b) there is no process at all or the process is considered to be poor.
Scenario (a) focuses on significant process improvements and requires use of DMAIC:
* Define process goals in terms of key critical parameters (i.e. critical to quality or critical to production) on the basis of customer requirements or Voice Of Customer (VOC)
* Measure the current process performance in context of goals
* Analyze the current scenario in terms of causes of variations and defects
* Improve the process by systematically reducing variation and eliminating defects
* Control future performance of the process
Originally, Six Sigma was defined as a metric for measuring defects and improving quality; and a methodology to reduce defect levels below 3.4 Defects Per (one) Million Opportunities (DPMO). Six Sigma is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola, Inc who has reported over US$17 billion savings from Six Sigma to date.
Six Sigma has now grown beyond defect control. It can be defined as a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects, defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target; and to systematically work towards managing variation to eliminate those defects. The objective of Six Sigma is to deliver world-class performance, reliability, and value to the end customer.
It is important to recall that every customer always values consistent and predicable services and/or products with near zero defects. Therefore they experience the variation and not the mean. Mean is their expectation or our target.
If we can measure process variations that cause defects i.e. unacceptable deviation from the mean or target, we can work towards systematically managing the variation to eliminate defects. It is implemented via two potential scenarios - (a) there is already an existing process(s) that is working “reasonably” well and (b) there is no process at all or the process is considered to be poor.
Scenario (a) focuses on significant process improvements and requires use of DMAIC:
* Define process goals in terms of key critical parameters (i.e. critical to quality or critical to production) on the basis of customer requirements or Voice Of Customer (VOC)
* Measure the current process performance in context of goals
* Analyze the current scenario in terms of causes of variations and defects
* Improve the process by systematically reducing variation and eliminating defects
* Control future performance of the process
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Project Charter
What is a Project Charter?
The project charter is part of your Project Strategy document. This document is one of the first deliverables on your project. The project charter should be no more than one page, even on large projects. The intention of the project charter is to provide an overview of the project, in business terms, that everyone can understand. It is not a list of requirements. In a sense, it is the project's mission. The project charter should consist of the following sections:
- Background
Who is requesting the project? Focus on the original group requesting the change, not those joining the project with their own requests. This section is a very brief statement of the business area originating the request and who eventually owns the application.
- Problem Statement
What problem is the project's completion solving? It is very easy to include too much detail in this section - don't! Instead, focus on solving the main problem. This should not be a list of requirements, simply an explanation of the problem to solve.
- Justification
Why should the project be done? This section should be a high-level statement of the reasons why the project should be done. Do not give detailed justifications, such as cost-benefit ratios.
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