One of my primary goals in life is to teach my kids to be eventually good, productive, and self-reliant adults.  One area of life-skills that my wife and I are focused on in teaching our children, is teaching them the principle of work: how to work, the value of work, to take ownership over their responsibilities, and to be proud of their accomplishments, and to learn to work as a team and family.  One way we are reinforcing the principle of work is through the use of effective Visual Management.

Visual Management has the following purposes:

Keep Reading [1038 words, 2 images & 4:09 Average Reading Time]

Yes, my face is on the front cover of the brochure (PDF Download).  But, little does the audience know that that picture (I’m the second, from the left, but better viewed in the PDF brochure) was taken while I was sitting on a fake sheep during a family trip to the animal farm at Thanksgiving Point in Utah.  I cropped just my face for submission to the event organizers, but the "real" picture is of me, at the insistence of my kids, sitting on a fake sheep. 

Keep Reading [859 words, 1 image & 3:26 Average Reading Time]

I remember a very humbling experience of thinking that I knew how to solve problems and being shown just the opposite by an hourly associate.  That was during my internship while I was in graduate school; I was haughty, boasting that I came from a top university and demonstrating in my thoughts and body language other prideful nonsense.   I’ve learned that you can learn something from anybody.  I’d like to think that I’ve become wiser since then and have changed my behavior to reflect that experience.

Keep Reading [991 words, 0 images & 3:58 Average Reading Time]

The Hidden Factory is a term that refers to activities in an operation or standard operating procedure (SOP).  A few examples of Hidden Factories are workarounds, rework, or any of the 7 wastes, which I will describe below.  Most organizations have some form of a Hidden Factory and being able to "see" these hidden factories in an organization requires learning to see what waste is and understanding that waste in any operation — service or manufacturing — can be a substantial drain on the bottom line, top line, on employee morale, shareholders and, most importantly, the customer.  

Keep Reading [962 words, 1 image & 3:51 Average Reading Time]

As I mature and become more aware of the subtleties of business, I am slowly learning the meaning of Leadership.  For most of my career and, in part, my education, I have aimed to be become the best — technically — in the field of Operations, Logistics, Supply Chain, Lean Manufacturing, and Six Sigma.  I haven’t achieved my aim — and, indeed, view that pursuit as a lifetime goal — but I am now at a place where I feel some sense of achievement in those areas that I mentioned and have become painfully aware of those areas where I need to grow.   I do not intend any hubris in what I am saying, but this post is primarily a post of reflection — Hansei — and brutally facing the facts of where I have personally traveled and how I need to improve.

Keep Reading [1181 words, 0 images & 4:43 Average Reading Time]

My daughter recently turned 10 years old.  So, because her friends have email and communicate via email, I recently helped her obtain an account.  In the process, we both learned something very important about abstract ideas and the icons we use to visually represent them.

My daughter attempted to create a "Contact List" of people and their email addresses — mainly family members that she would like to email with.  As she created a contact, she didn’t know and couldn’t find a way to "Save" the contact she just created.  Here is what the user interface looked like:

Keep Reading [427 words, 2 images & 1:42 Average Reading Time]