Comments for TXM

Comment on Tips for Surviving 2012 by Clive

Clive — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:21:18 +0000

At our planning session on Friday we revisited our business model – make, sell, count. We believe 2012 will be hard, but we focus on top line sales, process improvement, discretionary cost control and safety (focus on near misses)
This year when we talked about lean projects, we said that having lean in day to day thinking was already happening. We split our goals into quick fix or long term, normal work or projects. We built a dozen or so key goals for making our business better. It took 3 hours with a group of about 18 mangers and team leaders.
Bring on 2012

Comment on What is Team Leader Standard Work? by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Jamie Flinchbaugh — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 02:12:51 +0000

Leader Standard Work can be a great methodology. However, it has to be done work. It’s more than creating checklists. Even when done right, it takes at least a month to get used to and not everyone has that patience. If you get it wrong, it will take longer.

Here are some of the tips I have for creating such methods in IndustryWeek:

http://www.industryweek.com/articles/building_manager_standard_work_25986.aspx?cid=NLIWCI

Comment on Top 5 Lean Foundation Tools by Logistics Guy

Logistics Guy — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:59:07 +0000

I absolutely agree, seeing the wastes is the purpose of lean thinking. And value stream mapping serves this purpose.

Comment on Top 5 Lean Foundation Tools by Ben Benjabutr

Ben Benjabutr — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:25:16 +0000

VSM seems to provider broader perspective towards existing system and it takes time to complete desired future state.

Comment on Visual Management by Top 5 Lean Foundation ToolsTXM

Top 5 Lean Foundation ToolsTXM — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:39:45 +0000

[...] Visual Management Visual management is a huge part of Lean Manufacturing. It is one of the simplest tools and often overlooked, due to it’s simplicity. As the name implies Visual Management is the ability to manage everything in your factory (and support areas) visually. Read more… [...]

Comment on Value Stream Mapping by Top 5 Lean Foundation ToolsTXM

Top 5 Lean Foundation ToolsTXM — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:39:28 +0000

[...] Value stream mapping Simply put, the “Value Stream” is the series of processes through your company that add value to a product for which a customer will then pay for. In many manufacturing environments the manufacturing value stream is listed in the work order or traveller – those steps that need to be done in the right order to make the product. For process manufacturing environments, it’s the process line that creates the products value. Read more… [...]

Comment on Lean Housekeeping Part 1 – Sort, Set in order and Shine by Setup reductionTXM

Setup reductionTXM — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:11:33 +0000

[...] Remove obvious waste This is where your good housekeeping and 5S is so important. Every minute the machine we are changing over is idle is lost time, so we [...]

Comment on Ten Things to Do (and One thing Not to Do) about the Carbon Tax on Manufacturers by Mike Turner

Mike Turner — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:29:41 +0000

From my research into the non-promulgated avenues carbon tax implications is due to our being a regional Tasmanian manufacturer and with 60% national and a growing 40% of export clients there are indications that the tax will cause considerably greater impact.
The reason for this is that every process we currently perform will be impinged and our ability to recoup the rises in freight, raw materials, packaging, advertising etc plus increased travel cost to develop new markets cannot be bourne by increasing our prices because of (a) the very high AUD Fx placing pressure on our export prices;
(b) imported competitive products being manufactured under a less costly demand and thanks to (a) above, being thereby of considerably lower cost to our clients will se a demise in our market share;
(c) due to increased living costs there will be a wage case put to increase wages to maintain the employee living levels which when coupled with the prescribed superannuation contributions will further pressure Australian SME manufacturing operations.

Therefore the taxation ‘benefits’ declared for SMEs will not compensate small business because to take advantage of a taxation break you have to be making profits, we can only therefore predict that a direct result of the Carbon Tax will be a demise in our profitability, which means less tax for the ATO and certainly a retraction by us of our R&D due to the reduced cash in-flow.

Unfortunately it appears that due to the lack of understanding of Australian SME manufacturing businesses by the Federal Government advisors in respect to the Carbon Tax flow-on implications expressly in regional Australia there are going to be huge, unforeseen/predicted downside ramifications.