Purpose & Motive for creating leanmfg.com

Purpose

In general, as you peruse Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma sites, you will find many examples of “This-is-what-we-did-and-this-is-how-terrific-we-are-and-you-should-hire-us” that aren’t really concretely useful. However, finding concrete explanations on how to use them can be difficult!

Welcome to leanmfg.com! This site will contain concrete “how-to” stories for the Theory of Constraints, Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma tools that you have heard so much about.

These examples, these concrete, how-to stories, will come primarily from my TOC/Lean/Sigma consulting practice to both manufacturing and non-manufacturing concerns and also from my experience as a college professor for operations management and project management, teaching these very concepts. (For more on my credentials and experience, please see About us.)

There is nothing difficult or “rocket science” about Lean or TOC. There is a little bit of “rocket science” in the statistics of 6 Sigma, but not in its root philosophy. In fact, “Lean” is so easy, its basic concepts can be put into ninth grade level booklets (less than 150 pages each) with lots of pictures and diagrams . The technical know-how is not that hard. However, the cultural obstacles that arise as efficiencies rapidly take over a company are regularly very difficult… especially if you fail to effectively communicate how these changes will affect the people involved.

Motive

During my professional career, I have encountered a great many people in companies and in departments who are struggling with competition and with process and time pressures to perform using inadequate physical and informational tools. Frequently the problems they encounter are not within their control. They have to deal with upstream created (or not created) processes for which they are then responsible. (Please see the TTZ Overview for a description on how this operates). Helping these people and their wider organizations is the reason for the existence of this web site.

This site is presented in the spirit of Karma, of the Law of the Harvest: you reap what you sow, and even of the flip side of “paybacks.” (Everyone knows what happens when you do bad things to other people. There is the flip side to that regarding what happens when you send out good, and it works just as well, and just as reliably…..) Do good and good comes back to you (generally along with some abuse… to be expected and taken in stride!). .

I truly hope this site is useful and enlightening to you and yours.

Tim Ward.