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Thank you, that's so nice to hear. Hope you'll be enjoying many more of my videos and that they may help you professionally.

Hope you enjoy it and that it will help you teach Lean to your colleagues/students

Hi Karin, how great to hear, I'm guessing your program has had some good early successes, since you're implementing these pillars that are generally launched a bit later in the program. I'll pull my thoughts together and think about how to summarise those pillars into a video - they might be a bit less popular than the main TPM pillars, but they deserve some attention and explanation too 😉

Hi David, that's great to hear - hope you have great fun and learnings from your thesis study. Do note that the OLE calculations I describe here are based of machine OEE x crew size. This is a way to take machine effectiveness a level further and make it way more valuable than the usual manhours/units produced. If you're dealing more with people capacity and the machines are just there to help them (no really bottleneck machines or machine efficiency to deal with), then it's better to look at your Labor Effectiveness in much the same way as your usual OEE - that is, just the one-dimensional scale. Take away off-time first, then planned breaks etc, and then split real stoppages from overall lower speed and constant minor issues. To do this, you will need to have a standardised unit for measuring output per hour - that's a problem for many job shops, but I think it shouldn't be a problem in most agricultural companies, as it's high volumes with very comparable tasks day to day (at least while you're handling the same produce) - just like in most manufacturing.

Hi Paul, thanks for you reply, those are very valid points indeed. For anyone interested in this great video by Paul: czcams.com/video/vH-1deoUIZw/video.htmlsi=f3ZiBfe7v36B2IBp) I agree that continuous reduction of process variability will lower the loss to society (and is almost always beneficial for the producing company too). The issue I have with Process Capability (variation divided by specs) is that this ratio does not inherently benefit society, because the specification limits are more or less arbitrary. For a quality characteristic that applies to the design or direct function of the part (like the size of a nut, the positioning of a label, etc.) it's best to be in the centre, yes. I would still argue that you should consider transferring this decreased process variability downstream by promising tighter specifications (especially if the customer is willing to pay a premium for it - something Ford's competitors did, by the way, and that drove market for Mazda). When we're talking about a quality characteristic that is more like unilateral tolerance (like weight, break strain, etc. that usually have a hard minimum and a maximum that's more to have product categories), I would say it's often wasteful to stay more than 4-5 SD's away from that limit. In fact, especially in filling weights/volumes, you'll often see companies choose to stay much closer to that minimum, reducing the average when they successfully reduce process variation.

Good point about the specs - The loss function ignores the tolerances, as they are as you say arbitary often, when they should include an element of the voice of the customer. Good stuff as always Tom...

@@paulallen5321 and thank you for the challenge - it’s always good to add these extra nuances and the different angle of approach/thought 👍🙏

Yes, of course you may still use the Fishbone, that's also the premise of this video - just try and get that 5 Why part outside of the Fishbone's visual. I would advice limiting how many 5 Why's you do - my general advice is to first check which assumptions in the Fishbone are true and then pick the 1 or 2 your team feels are most impactful to the problem -> start by diving into those with 5 Why before spending a lot of effort on deep diving all those minor causal factors. It's not a hard and fast rule, just advice to keep your Root Cause Analysis efforts more effective in 90+% of the cases.

I usually start with a roll every 30 seconds, just one plane ordered of the colour that was rolled. You might want to hint to the teams that they could negotiate with the client about higher or lower sales volumes (which translates to rolling every 20 sec, or every 40 or 45 sec.), but they will have to deliver on that promise of course 😉 Round one will be interesting in any case - they will make a mess of it because everything is new. Do mention that while they're allowed to build up stock, any inventory in the factory will be counted and cost them money 'for keeping raw materials and WIP'. A general bonus tip (if you can handle the extra workload as the game master 😅): ask the team members how they feel after each round, how smooth were things, how's their stress level, etc. At first, you'll likely hear that some stations are super busy and can't handle the load while others are relaxed, almost bored (and probably laughing at those busy colleagues, since it's all a game anyway). If you do rounds with good kanban, and definitely if you do a full silent round, you'll see that stress levels go down a lot (the silent round with kanbans in place is the most productive and relaxed 'factory floor' anyone has ever experienced).

That is so great to hear - it brings me joy to know that my content helped you directly. Hope you’ll enjoy many more of my videos and wish you the best with your next Kaizen events!

Thanks for those nice words, happy you like the video - feel free to share it far and wide 😉

Good to hear you liked the video, hope you enjoy many more of my videos. If you ever have a question or video request, don’t hesitate to ask.

@@TomMentink , Thanks Tom and from the next view will try and contribute whatever I can for the growth of this channel.

Thanks Roby. Statistics is a strange beast: some people just get it immediately, that was not the case for me either. I found that very practical examples were the key to understanding the concepts of statistics for me, and that’s why I always try to explain it in as simple terms as possible - hope that helps others. Glad to hear that it works for you 😃

Thanks for the kind feedback, hope you enjoy many more of my videos. Since you’re not really producing a product, quality and product/service specifications will be less important (although I can imagine OTIF is really important and the market expects immediate reactions to demand changes 😅). That means you use the Planned Maintenance side of CI much more: deeply get to know your machinery, how wear and tear affects parts and make preventive maintenance plans accordingly. Many of your larger spare parts are ridiculously expensive, and also have very long leads times when ordered new, so you benefit even more from conditions based maintenance than most other industries. Of course the basics will work for you just as for any other: organise workplaces for optimal efficiency, safety and comfort with proper 5S, control standards on the 4 M’s, foster a Kaizen mindset of making and maintaining small improvements every day.

Thanks for the kind feedback, hope you enjoy many more of my videos. Since you’re not really producing a product, quality and product/service specifications will be less important (although I can imagine OTIF is really important and the market expects immediate reactions to demand changes 😅). That means you use the Planned Maintenance side of CI much more: deeply get to know your machinery, how wear and tear affects parts and make preventive maintenance plans accordingly. Many of your larger spare parts are ridiculously expensive, and also have very long leads times when ordered new, so you benefit even more from conditions based maintenance than most other industries. Of course the basics will work for you just as for any other: organise workplaces for optimal efficiency, safety and comfort with proper 5S, control standards on the 4 M’s, foster a Kaizen mindset of making and maintaining small improvements every day.

Glad you liked it, hope it can also help you explain our field to friends and colleagues 😉

I'm happy to hear you liked the video and got value from it! If it raises any other CI questions or suggestions for future videos, don't hesitate to ask - I'm happy to make videos 'on demand'

If they have different items in the 3PL than in your main warehouse, just treat them the same as any other product in your warehouses - determine the replenishment rates and stock levels and set up Kanban from there. If they are a sort of middle warehouse between your suppliers and you, then they will have a much more specific role to play: they will be your buffer between 'shop floor replenishment' and actual ordering from your supplier. Things will depend on what flexibility that 3PL warehouse has; say for example you're having daily freights and have to provide a picking list 16:00 the day prior, any Kanban card or empty box seen during a check round that comes in before 16:00 will be delivered the next day, boxes that are emptied later will have to wait 2 days before they're replaced. So make sure the remaining number of boxes will last you at least 2 days. Also, make the boxes big enough that it's easy to handle for your 3PL (if they only want to send you full pallets, than your 'box size' becomes a fully pallet...).

When your measurement system precisely gives you the same bias, you will structurally affect the process or product you’re using that measurement for. If you use it for SPC, you might get away with it, but practically, it’s always better to do a proper calibration to remove or correct for the bias. Gage R&R will not find a bias, unless you’re comparing multiple measurement systems to one another. Therefore make sure you have a calibration process in place next to R&R testing.

Hi Robert, this is a brilliant example of when Mother Nature can be a very useful category. In this case, it has additional benefits over just considering the Materials category, since the original material is most likely up to specs. The reason why I don't always like the Mother Nature category is because of the larger risk to blame some outside influence and not come up with actionable conclusions. It's certainly not a bad category to consider, just make sure it doesn't become an excuse bucket. If you would have used just the 4 M's, you could have gotten to the same conclusion if checking your storage Methods against the advice from the supplier. But I'll immediately admit that your stating Mother Nature as an explicit category helped that process along.

That would really depend on the original situation - 25% OEE gain is very big, so in practice such numbers will only come from AM if the original OEE is under 50% and much of the lost time comes from unplanned stops and low speeds. I've seen some lines really blossom after even a small (but intensive) start of AM dealt with a bunch of problems the machine incurred from lack of proper maintenance and attention to the operating standards. In general, I would put expectations at around 25-50% of the current time lost to unplanned stops. That gives a pretty good first estimate of the OEE benefit. Also don't forget that proper 5S and AM have many more benefits than pure OEE numbers - the reliability of the line goes up, but also the reliability for quality, employee happiness and efficiency, detection and prevention of problems.

You’re right, there is a lot more nuance with these studies, and I take a couple liberties to get the general concept across. I try to balance precision with easy to understand, which is a balance that will never be right for everyone. On Ppk of 1 being horrible, I agree with you - that was an overstatement: Ppk of 1 to 1,3 is good enough. Thanks for that correction.

VSM is not the best tool For such a comparison, but it will help you to first identify bottlenecks in the process and then you can check which products strain those bottlenecks most. When choosing between products to eliminate, I’d start with their profit margin (but do include the real cost for smaller volume products, not just an average of setup times etc.) and look at VSM and capacity to see for which products you should look only at variable costs (for products that you make on machines that are not at full capacity yet) and for which you should compare profit vs alternative products (when production capacity is fully utilised and you need to choose which products to produce).

Happy to hear you liked the video, thanks for sharing that.

Yes, that is a big factor. It is especially important for solving (often cross departmental) organisational issues - hence the usefulness of Kaizen Events for such cases. But it even seems easier in practice to free up key players (like the Subject Matter Experts you mention) totally for a few days than to get a couple hours from them for 3 months 🤷‍♂️

Glad to see you liked the video and got value from it. Thanks for sharing that. If it raised any questions, or you just have a future video request, don’t hesitate to share that too 😉

@@TomMentink yes sir, thank you! I appreciate you!

Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the sound isn't pleasant enough to listen to and the sound of the marker is way to screechy in these older videos (it was already much better in this one than videos of about a year before)- so I got myself a new microphone about 9 months ago. What I also learned is that the microphone itself is really not the whole story, they're actually quite finicky to set completely right, there's a lot to learn about positioning, interference, post-editing corrections, etc. Do you like the sound quality in my more recent videos better?

It's not really the mic. I think it's mostly the mixing. If you are able to manage to do small mixing progress it will definitely be better

@@dyyleokid4634 I'll dive into that some more (sound and video are not my main expertise, but I'm always learning in that field to make better future videos 👨‍🎓)

Hahaha, I couldn't agree more 🤣 I'm happy to hear that you like my videos and get value from them - thanks for sharing that. And that's probably also the best way to help me: feel free to share my videos with whomever you think might benefit from them too.

I agree! I've been a watching his videos for over a year now and im always getting great value from his videos!

My pleasure! I’m glad you liked the video.

Thanks for sharing that - I'm glad you liked the video and hope it will help you along in your journey! If you every run into CI or QM related questions or just have a suggestion for future videos - don't hesitate to ask, a good question makes a much more useful video (and at least one person will be looking forward to it 😅)

If you want to be considered qualified and competent you should hold a formal six sigma certificate of green belt or higher

@@NoBubbles I would say the need for a formal (usually external) certification depends on region and culture, but yes - Quality professionals should be proficient in root cause analysis, process thinking and conditions management. A Six Sigma certification is a good way to learn these skills and prove that you have them.

Hi Jasper, totally agree - I don't like the A-P-Q split for OEE either, but it's one that's used a lot 🤷‍♂ One of the things I advise people to always take into account is to define which time losses are planned vs not planned - and these aren't even categories, it's a simple matter of what does your planning department explicitly define vs what just happens at more or less random moments: czcams.com/video/vruTx66L78U/video.htmlsi=O3x54aE0eY97Jie8 And there's a whole set of more detailed OEE categories (as you know well, I know that much😉). This video (czcams.com/video/lDEd5muY7cU/video.htmlsi=PuCY4CtbiFD2SkTF) goes into my reasons for wanting to split out OEE categories - having dedicated owners and tools per category is an important reason, as is the time scale at which I think you should be looking at these categories (e.g. speed losses are something operators can act on on an hourly basis, while setup standard times are something you'd probably want to reduce with organised teams working off a quarterly or yearly improvement roadmap). Hope those two videos give a more nuanced view and they might be a better starting point for a discussion that will truly benefit the community with your experience and insights 😃

Great to hear your experiences - I'm sure other viewer also love it when you share such things (we're all CI enthusiasts out here, after all). Especially with these low-volume production runs, turnaround time and on time delivery are key indeed. You'll probably have seen that OEE isn't all that useful for making impactful improvements, but flexibility, change-over time, and the like are really important. Great stuff, thanks again for sharing.

​@@TomMentinkoh yes, definitely! OEE doesn't make sense when we have equipment that only has 11% utility rate 😂

My pleasure - hope it helps you in your career and development

My pleasure - happy to hear that you liked this one too 😃

Thank you for taking the time to share those kind words. That's exactly why I started this channel - I couldn't find a lot of good practical CI advice in video format, so it hit me that instead of feeling down about that, I should contribute my experience learn that way 😇 If you ever want to support the channel, and learn even more in the process, check out my online courses at www.tommentink.com. But you getting value from my content and making yourself and others more productive is the best form of gratitude. Wish you a great personal continuous improvement journey 😉

Thanks - glad to hear you like the video!

Dank je. Goed om te horen dat je de uitleg en video kunt waarderen. Mocht je trouwens vragen of suggesties hebben voor volgende video's, schroom niet om een verzoekje achter te laten 😉

My pleasure, I'm happy to hear that you liked it.

Thanks for taking the time to share that praise - makes me happy to hear you like my work. If my videos raise any questions or suggestions for future videos, let me know.

My pleasure - I'm glad you enjoyed the video. Thanks for taking the time to share that ☺ If you have questions or suggestions for other videos, don't hesitate to ask.

That is lovely - if anything, Kne'x is even more tricky that Lego (because it can turn to any angle and the connectors have more multiple angles), so the difficulty of building it from a written instruction is also much higher. It will also be a bit more tricky to make the Kne'x shapes in PowerPoint (or other software), but don't forget to focus on the instruction - it doesn't have to look 100% accurate, as long as it's a clear instruction. Don't know if you ever put built an IKEA piece: those instructions also often aren't to scale in the intermediate steps, leave out loads of detail and only focus on the key points for each step - great instructions. Also check what you can build and how many copies you'll want (how many groups at the same time) - this will likely limit the size and complexity of the building. But that's ok - you want a simple construction anyway: they should be able to build it in 1-2 minutes with the clear visual instruction, it'll cost them around 10 min or so with the written instruction. For the classroom, there is another issue: your pupils probably haven't written many instructions, they haven't themselves been taught to make those pretty formal text-based instructions (and you probably don't want to tell them that the Languages faculty is teaching them a wrong way of writing reports 😅). So maybe first ask them to write an instruction for some task they do in the classroom, a game or hobby, a chemistry experiment, or something like that. This way, they have some reference to what their preferred way of writing instructions is. They can then use different example instructions, combined with the learnings from playing this game, when making the instructions coming out of their Green Belt project. Or alternatively, you could ask them to collect/copy a number of instructions as preparation for this game, and even ask them to improve upon one of the instruction they found (especially useful and fun if it is an instruction for something in your school - if it is an improvement, they'll also get the satisfaction of seeing their work taken up as materials for the next group of students). footnote: writing an instruction is only 1 part of the skillset of a Green Belt, and it wouldn't receive much attention in most Green Belt courses since it's a more generic skill. The specifics of Green Belt are good Root Cause Analysis skills and a small set of statistical and data analysis tools - a Green Belt first and foremost has to be able to understand process physics and make the process more stable. But I honestly think that for high school students, learning how to make effective instructions is more important than the typical Green Belt skills: thinking about how the reader will interpret it and how to make it as easy as possible for them, being able to imagine your reader without the knowledge you're trying to impart and thinking from viewpoints and understanding different from your own - those are the competences that build great colleagues in any profession.

My pleasure Edmar, glad you liked the video and hope it will bring value for you. If you’ve got VI questions or video suggestions that would help you even more, please don’t hesitate to tell me 😉