Article
Ask Art: Why Should I Convert to a Pull System?
Deliver more value to your customers by converting your business to a pull system and connecting demand directly to your production system, advises Art Byrne.
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Case Study
How a Bakery Uses Lean Thinking to Drive Growth
A lean system that runs like clockwork and constant attention to customer service enables Barcelona-based 365.café to achieve the seemingly impossible: supplying 55 bakeries out…
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Article
6 Guidelines for Moving Toward a Lean Value Stream
Once you’re ready to use value-stream mapping to continuously improve your value streams, follow this advice from the authors of Learning to See, the workbook…
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Lexicon Term
Basic Stability
Having essential capability, availability, and flexibility in the 4Ms — manpower, machines, materials, and methods. A lack of basic stability in a process prevents improvements…
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Just-in-Time Production
Just-in-time is system of production that makes and delivers just what is needed, just when it is needed, and just in the amount needed. JIT…
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Lean Logistics
A pull system with frequent, small-lot replenishment established between each of the firms and facilities along a value stream. Let’s suppose that Firm A (a…
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Material Handling
Moving necessary materials through a production process within a facility. In a lean production system material handling does much more than just deliver materials. A…
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Pitch
The amount of time needed in a production area to make one container of products. The formula for pitch is: takt time x pack-out quantity…
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Pull Production
A method of production control in which downstream activities signal their needs to upstream activities. Pull production strives to eliminate overproduction and is one of…
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Lexicon Term
Value Stream Mapping
Value-stream mapping (VSM) is diagraming every step involved in the material and information flows needed to bring a product from order to delivery. It is…
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Press Release
Lean Manufacturing Novel "The Gold Mine" Is Now an Audio Book
In a compelling and instructive story, The Gold Mine addresses what might be the most important lean discipline—the human challenge of creating and sustaining the…
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