Got Boondoggle?

The lean journey is not a short easy trip. It takes years of effort in the relentless pursuit of continuous improvement. One of the best pie...

From my earliest lean lessons, I was directed to be creative in applying continuous improvement in manufacturing. Dr. Shigeo Shingo preached...

When creating computer files of your standard work instructions (charts), especially with the addition of pictures and movie clips, the size...

One of the best ways to speed up access to your standard work instructions with related supporting documents on a computer is to utilize the...

Our American culture is full of competition, awards, and status in our need to be recognized as the best, second to none. Just look at the n...

One misconception of lean manufacturing is the belief that it is just another program. Upper management perpetuates this belief by delegatin...

A place for everything and everything in its place is a central theme of 5S. Designating a home for all items makes it easy to find them. Bu...

To my dad, Major Edwin A. Wroblewski, (retired USMC) and to all Marines, unselfishly defending our country and it's people at all costs....

The majority of efforts in American manufacturing to implement lean manufacturing principles are dysfunctional because management does not u...

On my project to revamp standard work sheets on the shop floor, adding visual quality guides provided an excellent way to display common qua...

When properly posting standard work charts over the last few days, several hidden benefits of improved visibility and air flow emerged. By a...

The measure of meaningful standard work charts comes down to the level of details. Details spell out exactly "How" to perform the ...

The principle of standard work is part of the foundation of the Toyota Production System. Performing work steps in exactly the same method f...

Whenever a problem arises in any organization, one of the first action items by management is call a meeting. Typically, this meeting is hel...

In kaizen, a common goal is to optimize an assembly line or departmental process by streamlining value added tasks and eliminating wasteful ...

Happy Halloween! What better way to spend Halloween then performing quality tests on caskets. Working under tight deadlines and the demise o...

Visual management brings many things to mind when applied to lean manufacturing principles. We think of plastering charts, graphs, pictures,...

Several people have told me that they don't quite understand the meaning of "Got Boondoggle?" for my blog title. Well, I picke...

I ran across a couple of frightening articles today. (Must be a Halloween prank, please wake me up from my nightmare!). In the October issue...

As explained in Point Kaizen , a process improvement can be accomplished by one person quickly (usually within 1 day). This past week we had...