Lean Process Improvement Archives - Page 2 of 3

Warehouse Efficiency Improvement Tips!

Struggling with Process Ownership? Is it a Failure to Communicate?

Things can always be faster when you work in a warehouse or distribution center. Speed has become the name of the game when it comes to staying competitive in the global supply chain.

Major players like Amazon and Walmart have distribution centers all over the world, pumping out packages at lightning speed.

If you want to keep your customers satisfied, you need to keep things moving in your warehouse or distribution center. Use these tips to keep up the pace and make your facility as efficient as possible.

Shiny New Technology or Back to the Basics? What is Your Strategy?

Imagining the Supply Chain of the Future!

We hear about all of this cool and exciting new technology every day. Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Drones and Autonomous Vehicles, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, Big Data and more.

As such it’s easy to become enamoured with the prospects of implementing these brand new technologies in your company.

But for many companies they are struggling each and every day just to get the basics right. Ensuring deliveries are on time, making sure purchase orders are placed, changed, and acknowledged, keeping track of and reducing inventory levels, managing forecasts and forecast accuracy, and training and retaining resources are just a few of the basics that companies are working vigilantly to address every hour of every day.

Given pressures to reduce costs, improve productivity, increase competitiveness and increase asset velocity what should your strategic focus be?

Shiny new technology or boring old basics?

Never Automate a Bad Process!

A “Don’t Touch” Strategy will Dramatically Lean out your Supply Chain!

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When I was presenting the latest Supply Chain Strategic Plan the CEO said to me, “We’ve already spent millions on Supply Chain! Every process should be working like clockwork. Why do you need more money?”

It was true, to a degree. While I had only recently joined the company it was true that the company was investing over $10 million to upgrade and automate their Distribution Center operations.

My predecessor had spearheaded this investment. The current Distribution Center operations were unable to handle the growth, the change in product mix, and the dynamics associated with rapid fulfillment and online shopping.

But there were some fatal flaws which were at the core of their investment plan. Most significantly they failed to optimize the process first.

As a result they were spending millions of dollars automating a bad process.

Lean in the Back Office … Why is it so difficult?

A “Don’t Touch” Strategy will Dramatically Lean out your Supply Chain!

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Implementing a Lean program on the Manufacturing floor, in a Warehouse operation, or in a Distribution Centre is challenging enough. There are a series of process steps in which materials are transformed or moved in some fashion. Try implementing Lean in the Back Office.

And your Lean program has at its core the objective of making these operations as efficient as possible. But when you try to apply these same Lean principles to the support organizations, or the back office, you are likely to experience a wide range of reactions.

So why is it so difficult to implement, and sustain, a Lean program in the Back Office of your organization?

Value Stream Mapping the Future State Process!

We had completed value stream mapping the current state processes across some very significant business processes in the company. It took a fair amount of time even though we had the active involvement of subject matter experts and leaders from every functional organization.

When all was said and done the current state involved hundreds of process steps, almost 200 pain points, and dozens of iterative, repetitive loops. The company was just being introduced to Lean process improvement techniques. And as challenging as it was to reach a common understanding of what the current processes were the difficult part was about to start.

How were we going to define and map the Future State process?

The Disintermediation of the Supply Chain!

Want Success? Integrate a Change Leadership Work Stream in your Transformation Program!

What is disintermediation?

Most definitions of disintermediation characterize it as the elimination of intermediaries, or “cutting out the middleman“.

Further consider that the “Wastes” associated with Lean thinking and principles include transportation, inventory, over production and motion amongst others. Eliminating these wastes is critical for peak performance.

Why is this relevant?

A truly efficient and effective Supply Chain must include a strategy, plans, business processes, and performance metrics that incorporate disintermediation and the elimination of waste!

Collaborative Robots: Making Manufacturing Jobs More Valuable

Industry 4.0 – Smart Manufacturing of the Future! (Infographic)

First, a “Prime Objective” of the Shasta EDC is job growth in the manufacturing and technology sectors, including the use of collaborative robots. This is our key focus. However, the recruitment, retention, and expansion of our companies is equally important.

There is obviously a symbiotic relationship between employer and employees. However, from time to time there are talent gaps that emerge and technologies that force us to rethink our approaches to business.

Data shows that the number of manufacturing jobs are declining, and the jobs that remain are shifting to a mixture of the traditional and tribal knowledge around manufacturing and a blend of technical knowledge that helps to augment current manufacturing with the practical application of emerging technologies.

Seasoned Leadership in Action™ – An Interview with Ron Emery, Continuous Improvement Consultant

What is Mentoring?

At Supply Chain Game Changer we believe in sharing experiences and expertise from people in every industry and from across the globe. As such we have introduced our “Seasoned Leadership in Action” Interview series at Supply Chain Game Changer. This interview is with Ron Emery, Continuous Improvement Consultant, Author and Entrepreneur.

The Supply Chain Carbon Footprint Reduction Strategy! (Infographic)

The Green Supply Chain: True Sustainability or Just a Marketing Stunt?

When I was 11 years old everyone in Grade 6 was required to create and make a speech in front of the class. I wrote a speech on Air Pollution. It was an emerging issue in the news at that time. I talked about statistics on the levels of Air Pollution, the damage it was causing, and what we needed to do to curtail and fix the problem. This was long before I had heard the words Supply Chain Carbon Footprint.

I ended up winning the local and regional public speaking competitions with that speech. I didn’t actually end up doing much about Air Pollution beyond helping to promote awareness of the issue with my speech. But it did plant the idea in my mind that we all had a responsibility to create awareness and help protect our environment in whatever manner that we could.

Streamline your Entire Distribution Centre or Warehouse at One Time!

Cutting Edge Warehouses! (Video)

How many times have you looked at your Distribution Centre operation and thought about how you would re-layout and streamline the process flow if you had the chance?

When you are starting with a new, empty facility it is clearly much easier to layout the operations to make the best possible flow of materials and processes. But when you have an existing operation which has evolved over a long period of time, you are likely faced with utilities, equipment, infrastructure, walls, and paradigms all of which have resulted in a rather inefficient flow of materials and people and processes.

This was the situation we had in one of our Distribution Centres. In this particular Distribution Centre the current layout of the operation had been the result of many iterations of adding new customers, new products and new processes over time with the associated fluctuations in demand for everything.

Yet with the launch of our Global Process Excellence project we had unleashed our employees to make the improvements they had imagined could be made for a long time.

Can Lean Manufacturing Really Help Supply Chain?

Is Just In Time Past Its Time?

From the outset, it may not seem relevant to someone who has never applied lean manufacturing processes to their manufacturing methods. On the other hand, lean manufacturing processes can really help the supply chain perform a lot better.

In fact, some of the core principles of lean can also be applied directly to supply chains for making them more productive and efficient. Stay with us as we explain the connection between the two.

On Time Delivery – Get that right First!

What Gets Measured Is What Gets Done!

No matter what industry you are in and no matter what channels you are serving your Customers expect delivery of their goods on time.

You may have different pressures, to increase profits for instance, but you must take care of the basic expectation of on time delivery first.

If you don’t have on time delivery all your other pressures will not matter. Your customers will go elsewhere and your business will fail. Even if you have a unique product that no one else in the world has (for now) you must deliver on time to your customers. If not there will always come a time when your customers will be able to go elsewhere.

Providing on time delivery may seem basic. But it is the foundation on which the rest of your business must be built.

The Agile Supply Chain! Why Agility is Trumping Lean!

A “Don’t Touch” Strategy will Dramatically Lean out your Supply Chain!

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The modern supply chain grows increasingly complex with each passing day. The digitization, focusing on fundamentals and change, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and many other factors are transforming how the agile supply chain functions.

Once, the lean supply chain was considered to be the most effective form of manufacturing and supply chain management. However, a new concept in supply chain processes, the agile supply chain, is quickly growing to replace the often overused term.

Featuring Our 12 Best Global Process Excellence ™ Articles!

The company I had just joined had over two dozen logistics and distribution facilities around the world. While there were a lot of great people in those operations they had little interaction with their peers around the globe. But best global process excellence procedures were nowhere to be seen.

The result was that they operated as a series of islands, each developing and customizing every process for their own purposes. Over time this resulted in diminished operational and cost effectiveness and no optimization whatsoever.

And with customers looking at doing business in multiple facilities at the same time it was impossible to explain why this was not seamless given the inherent process disparities.

As such I launched a new program, Global Process Excellence™, to define and deploy the best, standardized processes everywhere. This article is a compilation of our best articles documenting that journey of leadership and discovery, which in some cases resulted in achieving Best in Class results.

How to Improve Industrial Process Efficiencies!

10 Signs You Should Reboot Your Lean Program!

Industrial efficiency is defined as a manufacturer’s ability to produce a product at the lowest possible cost that will allow them to make a profit. To calculate the industrial process efficiencies, the cost of production per unit must be compared to the unit output of that product. Ideally, industrial processes should have a lower cost per unit of output to be deemed efficient in any manufacturing plant.

Efficiency can also be improved by limiting the number of wasted resources that are used to produce a specific product.

Read on to understand how industrial processes can be made more efficient.