State of Mind Leadership

As Six Sigma quality and process efficiency becomes less of a differentiator, understanding the voice of customers, constituencies, and markets will become a critical tool to master. ...

... "In the new normal, says Clifton, the old ways of doing business won't work anymore. The men and women who will conquer this new world will be the ones who best understand their constituencies' state of mind. " ...

Via Gallup: Next Generation Leaders

Lean Workforce Adapts to Business Conditions

In this blistering tough economy, lean-trained workers adjust to business conditions by shifting from waning companies and industries to more adaptive enterprises that value their lean mindset. ...

... "about 15 former Eagle Industries employees were trained in lean manufacturing techniques and subsequently hired by New Bedford Tactical Gear through a recent partnership with WIB. " ...

Via New England Business Bulletin: WIB

Six Sigma Quality for Scale

Six Sigma process is needed to scale products and processes globally while sustaining quality. Design thinking allows a company to adapt and shift its growth strategies. Both methods need to coexist for large enterprises to evolve successfully. ...

... "On a much larger scale, it is unimaginable that Intel could produce a single one of its highly complex semiconductor chips or that Procter & Gamble could deliver laundry detergent of consistent quality globally without these types of analytical techniques. " ...

Via New York Times: Six Sigma and Design Mix

Ingersoll-Rand Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence

Ingersoll-Rand has been challenged by the economic downturn with exposure to the construction market and the need to service a higher debt load related to acquisitions. Yet, the company is positioned in the HVAC market for infrastructure investments and has expanded geographically into Asian markets, where growth is expected. ...

... "IR has been using Lean Six Sigma for years, and will continue to rely on it to achieve operational excellence, which reflects IR's clear and constant awareness of efficiency and cost. " ...

Via Seeking Alpha: Ingersoll-Rand Excellence

Operational excellence is a key lever for the company in 2009. ...

Ingersoll Rand via Reuters: "We are realizing the synergies from the recent acquisition of Trane and from our initiatives in purchasing and Lean Six Sigma, which will produce even greater benefits in 2009. "

The company has invested in training programs. ...

Ingersoll Rand Lean Six Sigma Training Series.

IR has expanded its lean methods globally. ...

China Lean: "Ms. Zhang Dong is currently the Lean six sigma manager of Ingersoll Rand Industrial Technology Air Solutions, Asia Pacific. She has more than 14 years working experience in Engineering, Operations, Marketing and Service. "

Ingersoll Rand employees have had successful careers in industry, helping manufacturers become successful with Lean Six Sigma. ...

Mark Beffel Bio via APICS: "Mark has over 35 years experience in Manufacturing, Engineering, and Operations management with John Deere, Pentair, Lozier, Ingersoll Rand and Manitowoc. "

IR leaders are published in the field. ...

Leaning Into Six Sigma Book by Barbara Wheat via Barnes & Noble: "Barbara Wheat is the Director of Six Sigma for Ingersoll-Rand Tool and Hoist Division, where she brings the tools and techniques of both Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma together to institutionalize a world-class system of continuous improvement. "

Will Six Sigma Impact Innovation

Six Sigma and innovation are often seen at odds with one another. However, the improvement mindset can be tuned to identify and exploit breakthrough innovations. ...

... "Basically, to be an innovative company, one needs to encourage incremental improvement and always strive for the breakthrough. If there is a secret it is to foster the attitude of let's find the change that will improve our performance. " ...

Via Caller-Times: J.P. Ellenberger

Lean Specialist Sees Process Constraints

Lean is a mindset and lean practitioners can spot constraints quickly. ...

... "They will have an obvious bottleneck in the milk frothing process and yet when the guy has finished heating the milk he will start pouring it into the cups, thereby starving the constraint. " ...

Via Ferret: Volgren's Peter Campbell focuses on Lean

Innovative Thinking Integrated With Culture

Innovation is needed to differentiate corporate and product performance in the global economy. Lean principles can be extended to the growth agenda to support building an innovative culture and workforce. ...

... "What is really needed today is what I call systematic and lean innovation. That is, you have to make innovative thinking part of the entire corporate culture. " ...

Via Oakland Business Review on MLive: Lean Innovation Summit

Hospital Lean Thinking Enabled By RFID Technology

Hospital will digitize lean thinking through the use of RFID technology in healthcare processes. ...

... "HealthIT Cluster chief executive Andrea Pettet says the trial aims to use RFID tagging to ease overcrowding in emergency departments, using the principles of lean thinking. " ...

Via Stuff.co.nz: Hospital Patient Tracking

Hospital Operational Efficiency

The Next Generation Factory Uses Lean Techniques to Shift Thinking

AMD's Dr. Douglas Grose sees lean techniques as a strategic imperative to streamline the Next Generation Factory (NGF). ...

... "Building on its pioneering efforts in the adoption of Lean techniques and Automated Precision Manufacturing in semiconductor factories, AMD is joining with industry partners, including ISMI, to develop new tools and processes for further streamlining both front-end and back-end production. For example, current practice across the industry is to move wafers through the process steps in 25 wafer batches, but most of the tools can only process a few or even one wafer at a time, greatly increasing the amount of time it takes to process an entire 25 wafers, slowing the delivery to the customer and extending time-to-revenue for the manufacturer. Small Lot Manufacturing (SLM) and Single Wafer Tools (SWT) are proposed changes that would greatly improve manufacturing efficiency, but requires an industry-wide shift in thinking. Collaborating on addressing this issue and others magnifies the impact by distributing investments of time, talent and money across all the parties that ultimately benefit. " ...

Via AMD: Customer at Center of Chip Manufacturing


Related:

Rapid Prototyping, Tooling and Manufacturing: "A major break-through has been achieved in rapid manufacturing by moving from SLS to SLM. "

Rapid Manufacturing

NGMTI: "The purpose of the Next Generation Manufacturing Technology Initiative (NGMTI) is to accelerate the development and implementation of breakthrough manufacturing technologies ... "

Manufacturing - Next Generation Manufacturing: "This will require factories that can be quickly reconfigured to adapt to changing production and that can be operated by highly-motivated and skilled knowledge workers. "

Customer Centric Enterprise: "Solving the trade-off between customer centric manufacturing on the one hand (meaning high variety and fast responsiveness) and low costs, stable capacity utilization and high quality on the other necessitates incorporating systematic methodologies for manufacturing planning, process design and quality assurance in an integrated manner. "

Florida Lean Manufacturing Imperative

Manufacturing training offers opportunity for workers to challenge themselves. Workers that can think and embrace a quality mindset are positioned for success. ...

... "When Lumedyne implemented the Lean Manufacturing process, its production increased from five units per week to 15 units in three days, Rhoden said. " ...

Via St Petersburg Times: Manufacturing Training