Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Six Sigma Help by Manufacturing Consulting Services, Inc.

Why should you be interested in this site?

Because you can begin to achieve huge benefits starting in less than 90 days with the methods presented on this site! For example, here are some results for Manufacturing Consulting Services, Inc. clients which include both manufacturing and non-manufacturing organizations.

• Profits increased by more than 500%
• Door to door time decreased by 90% with similar drops in work-in-process inventory
• Diamond drill bit average throughput time dropped from 10 days to 1 day.
• Production time for the actual fabric cover for an automatic pool cover manufacturer dropped from 1.5 days to 45 minutes.
• Intellectual Property processing time (the interval between when a company researcher proposes a new idea and when the company's General Consul applies for a Provisional Patent) decreased from between 2 years to under 8 weeks.
• Reduced interval between when an item was received on the dock to when that item was ready for invoice payment for a cleaning equipment manufacture from 75 days to 6 days.
• Floor space requirements decreased by 40%
• Distance product has to travel from start of production to completion decreased by 65%
• Employee productivity increased by more than 200%

For organization turn-around-results graphs, see Lean Thinking Results at a Diamond Drill Bit Manufacturer and Cleaning Equipment Company Lean Thinking Results These methods really do work. For further examples of concrete results, see the Case Studies link lower on this page.

Site Content Overview

This web site exists to provide both a useful education as well as tooling to understand and fix hassle-ridden-organization-wide process designs, thereby increasing your organization's survivability and profitability while simultaneously decreasing you own and your coworker's hassle! Let's begin with a site overview.

1. About us The point of this site is to learn and DO process diagnostics and repair both in organization-wide processes and in system-specific processes as well as during any initial process design. This link leads to an overview of the author's career and resume' to offer reassurance that the methods DO work… over and over again.
2. Foundation Principles Overview This section introduces the basic tools of Continuous Process Improvement including tools for basic process diagnostics and repair.
3. Case Studies in the "SUCCES" teaching format. These case studies illustrate the Foundation Principles via application, thus making those principles more concrete and therefore more directly applicable to the reader's own processes.
4. Additional Continuous Process Improvement Tools
5. Purpose and Motive for Creating www.leanmfg.com
6. Site map
7. Site Feedback for leanmfg.com
8. Downward links near the bottom of this index page. These are Web pages about this site such as What's New, Contact Us, About Us, Terms of Use, etc.
9. Accesskeys at the very bottom of every page on this site. Supported Accesskeys; Home; What's New?; Site Map; Terms of Use; Feedback Form; Top of Content; Top of Page.

Foundation Principles Overview

There are a number of tools and stories that I tell to my clients, especially to those clients who have never done a formal continuous improvement process in their organization. This section is to introduce those stories and my perspective on how to do continuous process improvement. These tools, stories, and perspectives have proven useful whether you are improving a manufacturing process ora service process. In addition, they are also applicable to improving the information flows that drive the production /service flows. And finally, they are applicable as well to improving the processes that create both the information flows and the production / service flows.

Here is an overview of the basic tools I use in teaching and coaching Continuous Process Improvement.

1. The first thing I teach is contained in the Four Basic Principles that I use throughout my consulting practice:
   1. Why versus How
   2. Continuous Improvement versus Instant Perfection
   3. "Development" versus "Mistakes"
   4. The System Is Never Done

2. Next, we will discuss Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). There is a great deal already written about CPI. I use 4 tools to introduce to explain these concepts to my clients and to my students:
   1. The Plan Do Check Adjust (PDCA) cycle
   2. The Sluice Analogy
   3. The Helix - a more realistic and useful portrayal of the PDCA cycle
   4. Strategic CPI

3. Next , we will visit the major approaches to CPI:

   1. Lean Thinking with it's Value Stream Mapping tools as the Key to the Lean-Sigma toolbox and tips on Navigating Lean-Sigma Alphabet Soup.
   2. The Theory Of Constraints (TOC), and then we get into the topic of
   3. Melding Lean Thinking, 6 Sigma & Theory of Constraints because, you see, they each have strengths that complement one another!
   4. For further reading on these and related topics please see my Client Suggested Reading Library PDF.

4. Finally, to wrap up Foundational Theory, I'll introduce 2 additional topics that I use to explain process and organizational improvement to my clients and students:
   1. The Triple-Tiered-Z, or TTZ - This is a combination TOC and Lean Value-Stream tool that I use to teach organizational dynamics. And,
   2. The Schools of Lean Implementation - These are anecdotes that I use to illustrate specific methods or to debunk specific myths in the implementation of Lean/Sigma improvement projects.
      • Paul Bunyan School of Lean Implementation
      • Chiropractic School of Lean Implementation
      • Plumber's School of Lean Implementation

Case Studies

This section offers illustrative stories on how to implement some of the tools of TOC/Lean/Sigma. These are not exhaustive explanations of the cases involved so much is they are illustrations of how to proceed with the given tool or how to use tools in sequence or combination. Following the spirit of Tornado-Like-Improvement-Processes I guide my clients to apply the tools and methodologies of the Theory Of Constraints, Lean Thinking, and Six Sigma, until they can begin to apply them and obtain experience in applying them independently of me. That is frequently, in fact, the point! Here is a sampling of the stories… for now:

• Diamond Drill Bit Manufacturing Company
• Dock to Marketing
• Custom Kitchen Cabinet Mill
• Receiving to Payment
• Lean Sigma tools applied to Intellectual Property processing

And here is a sampling of single page result summaries from applying the Foundation Priciples. (These are .pdf files and are all smaller than 16K.)

• Lean Thinking Results at a Salt Lake City Diamond Drill Bit Manufacturer
• Salt Lake City Cleaning Equipment Company Lean Thinking Results
• Lean Thinking Results at a Salt Lake City Pool Cover Manufacturer

Tool Box

These are tools I have used to help my clients. Please view them as an addition or an augmentation of existing Lean, 6 Sigma or Theory of Constraints tools, not a displacement or substitute. Since I don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel, please take a look at my Client Suggested Reading Library for an introduction to additional basic tools. Here are the tools, in addition to those referenced it the library:

• Ideas that are Made to StickThis is a brief summary of a book called Made to Stick by 2 brothers, Chip Heath & Dan Heath, on the subject of helping people learn and act upon ideas.
• Magnet Layout Tool This is a tool for rapidly brainstorming potential floor or workstation layouts for moving processes into "flow" order.
• Separate High-volume processes from Low-volume processes Sometimes this concept is called "Focus Factories."
• Pain X Frequency These are basic tips and tricks for relatively quick identification of central process constraint candidates.
• Kanban (Visual) Inventory This is a basic overview of how to "See" your Work-In-Process Inventory levels for real-time visual feedback on process performance.

Please see the Downward Links for further information on:

• What is New?
• About us
• Contact Information
• leanmfg.com Terms of Use
• Access Keys

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