Tag: Lean

Lean process improvement techniques are time honoured approaches to improve the productivity and effectiveness of any business process.

Project Prioritization Simplified!

Are you a Game Changer? Tell us your Story!

We had the “Call To Action” from the CEO.  The business needed to be transformed to support growth.  And the business needed to be financially stronger and much more productive.

With the mandate established we had named the change initiative that we were about to launch.  We had enlisted leaders from every functional organization.  And we had began to roll out our communication strategy.

This project involved every employee, every function, and every process in the company.  We needed a simple way to prioritize all of the projects that we were about to undertake.

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

10 Signs You Should Reboot Your Lean Program!
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The box I was looking at in the Pick-To-Light (PTL)  lane was full of at least 1-2 dozen different skus with as many as one to twenty of each sku in the box.  It looked like the insides of a piñata in there.  Although a piñata is used in celebrations I was quite sure that when the retail store opened the box they wouldn’t be celebrating.

All along the PTL conveyor every box looked like an explosion of different skus in different quantities.  At every station an employee was following the lights and picking a different quantity of each sku from one set of boxes and putting them in the “piñata” box.

I knew that this was the way it had historically been done, and the company had just spent millions and millions of dollars automating this historic process, but from a Lean perspective the whole approach was wasteful, slow, and expensive.

Was it really necessary to touch every single piece of every single sku multiple times?

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Warehouse Cleaning Checklist! (Infographic)

A Comprehensive Warehouse Safety Guide!

Maintaining a high standard in warehouse cleanling is about more than just creating a more pleasant and attractive workplace. It can in fact contribute to greater safety, better employee health, longer-lasting equipment, reduced merchandise damage, and increased productivity. 

Warehouses can be hectic environments at the best of times, so sometimes it can be hard to find time for cleaning. To keep your warehouse spic-and-span, try to allot a few minutes at the end of every day for cleaning. Deep cleans do not need to be done as often, but you should aim to schedule them in at least once a month. 

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Introducing Lean In Retail … Start in the Backroom!

The Agile Supply Chain! Why Agility is Trumping Lean!

The Retail company I had just joined was undergoing a massive transformation.  Fundamentally the new merchandising strategy was to curate a dramatically different set of products from that which was carried historically, but in addition to what was carried historically.  What did this mean for the backroom in every store?

This meant that an enormous number of the business processes had to be transformed to support the new product set because management of the new merchandise required much different capabilities in all aspects of running a retail company.  Not only did this transformation require new capabilities but it also required  improvements to productivity and efficiency throughout the company.  And overall this meant a need for cultural change.

I decided that I would introduce Lean process improvement techniques to this company.

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