The Lean Logistics Blog

March 21-22, 2013 | Florence, KY Keeping with the true spirit of PDCA, we have improved this workshop to include additional gemba time – both in the Operations Center and now at a Lean Fulfillment Center warehouse! Modeled after the Shingo- award winning workbook Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream, this dynamic and highly interactive workshop teaches […]

  As a brand new employee and person to lean, I was a little intimidated during my first week of work at a “lean enterprise.”  I came to LeanCor with a marketing and sales educational background and non-profit career experience where lean thinking wasn’t part of everyday discussion.  I thought, “why is lean such a […]

Image via Wikipedia As a discussion prompt for the  Continuous Improvement, Six Sigma, & Lean group on LinkedIn, a member asked the following questions: “1. What is lean’s speed limit, if it is based on speed? 2. Can lean be implemented quickly through brute force? 3. How do you implement lean quickly when management wants […]

In his August Blog entry titled “Continuous Improvement: Filling the Gap Between Floor Workers and Senior Management,” Jacob Nance briefly touches on the A3X.  In this post, my aim is to build upon what Jacob introduced  and further develop how this versatile tool can be used.  Properly leveraged, the A3X is a simple yet immensely […]

When companies of all sizes commit to becoming a lean organization they enthusiastically embark on implementing 5-S, kanban cards, standard work, kaizen events, visual management, etc. Around six to 12 months later, these same companies often abandon most of their lean initiatives and return to doing business as usual; push production, cluttered work areas, and […]

Sort, Set, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. When discussing lean concepts, “5S” tops the list of the most known along with the likes of “Kaizen,” “Kanban,” “JIT,” and “Poka-Yoke.” Many educational resources are available to learn these concepts, such as the specialized guides available on LEI’s website http://www.lean.org.  However, the vast majority of these guides frequently overlook […]

During any operational lean journey, one will often find there are many things to fix and improve with a disproportionate amount of time and resources. A key part of this journey is being equipped with a toolbox to identify and eliminate waste. These tools, (5-Why, Fishbone Diagram, Pareto, etc.), can be extremely effective in uncovering […]

Image via Wikipedia We’ve all heard the phrase, “you can’t make something out of nothing.”  Resources are necessary to accomplish anything great or small.  However, problems arise from using resources unproductively, applying the wrong resources, failing to tap into necessary resources, or directing resources toward the wrong outputs. In each of these instances, waste is […]