Unextended Lean – The Whirlpool Experience

[tweetmeme source=”leanisgood” service=”ow.ly” only_single=false]Last August Whirlpool announced it would be closing the Evansville, Indiana plant and building a new plant in Mexico.  A recent article here talks about how they have been removing equipment slowly from the plant and re-installing it elsewhere, all while continuing to make product.  Evolving Excellence has had previous posts regarding Whirlpool and this facility in particular way back in 2006.  Paul Coburn, vice president of Whirlpool’s Evansville Division is quoted:

In the last six months we have delivered strong results in spite of having to see a good deal of our equipment taken out of the building and moved to its new location. I believe that it is a testament to your character that you have continued to work hard to preserve the positive reputation of the Evansville workforce during this period.

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Recent Poll Results – 5S, When to Pull

[tweetmeme source="leanisgood" service="ow.ly"]Just wanted to post about the results of a couple polls that readers took the time to take.

A few weeks ago I a wrote a post entreating people to pull early in their implementations.  I asked the question the question n  few linkedin groups and people took  ‘early’ to mean first.  I wouldn’t recommend doing pull ‘first’ necessarily.  The intention of the post was to challenge the belief that pull has to wait for a long time (like years) for a high level of stability to be achieved. 

Lean Implementation – When to Pull

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Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog does a nice series called 5 Questions in which he asks various people associated with lean five questions (good name for this series). I find myself implementing either lean or continuous improvement at my third organization and something that Michael Balle talked about a few months ago when he was answering Kevin’s 5 questions got me thinking (here is the post with Michael’s 5 answers to Kevin’s 5 questions) about when you should begin perfecting your value stream (create stability, eliminate waste, etc) and when you should ‘connect’ your value stream.