After a good Lean training session, people return to work with their heads full of ideas. A week later, the daily grind returns: a plan to execute, a breakdown on the line, vacations on the schedule. Ideas go into a notebook and stay there.
Together with Leantrix, we advise you on how to choose training so that it applies to your facility from the very beginning, and what to do in the first two weeks to make the change really happen.
The production process can be conducted in many ways. Work can be divided among multiple operators, each responsible for a specific step. A linear flow can be established. Alternatively, solutions derived from the Toyota production system, such as chaku-chaku, can be employed. This time, we take a closer look at this method, specifically in terms of its demands on space and workstation organization.
When a new person comes onto the floor, every shift manager has to keep track of what they can and can't do. Usually, that place is their own head. This works until the manager changes positions, gets sick, or simply forgets.
Every minute of machine downtime costs money. In manufacturing plants where product changes are frequent, changeovers are one of the biggest time-wasters. SMED, a methodology for reducing changeover times to under ten minutes, is the answer to this problem.
Maintaining order in the warehouse doesn't always require reorganizing processes, new shelving, or a week of downtime. Sometimes, it's enough to designate spaces for items that are already there.
Nearly 60% of Polish manufacturing companies are struggling with excessive employee attrition. The standards you spent months building can crumble in a matter of weeks—if they're only in the minds of the people who just left.
Visual management doesn't replace regulations or training. However, it ensures that safety information reaches people before they even have a chance to read it.
Have you ever finished a shift feeling like everyone was working hard, but the result wasn't good? The reason is almost always the same.
5S seems like the simplest Lean method. It has five steps, decades of history, and hundreds of descriptions online. Yet, 5S implementations return to the workshop agenda in the same plants year after year.
A machine breakdown in the middle of a production shift is one of those moments no one likes. The mechanic is busy elsewhere, the operator is idle, and the plan falls apart. And when the mechanic finally arrives and asks when the last time someone checked the oil level or cleaned the filter, the answer can be telling.
