A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek “incremental” improvement over time or “breakthrough” improvement all at once. Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.
According to the Economist, robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology – and that makes their progress peculiarly fascinating. DARPA, the Pentagon research agency which runs the DRC, has made robots a priority because it suspects that the technology may be on the cusp of scaling great heights. This fascination has produced robots…
As the sun traverses the heavens ever higher with each and every day, winter has finally been forced to release us from its frigid embrace. With every passing day, the mud gives way to green grass, the trees burst with the youthfulness of light green leaves, fruit trees are in full blossom and abuzz with…
“It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint”, by XONITEK’s Joseph Paris discusses the perennial problem of attempting to apply lean strategies, whilst failing to engage in honest conversations that ensure the company works in unison. Published in Lean Management Journal in the March 2014 issue. Download PDF
Can you be confident, aggressive, and humble? Yes you can. Unfortunately, humility is often overlooked in leadership discussions. And yet it is one of the most powerful virtues. As one of the first female F-14 fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy, operating in one of the highest pressure, most extreme environments imaginable, I can assure…
Those of you who read my articles and follow my missives on social media know that I more often write of the “soft-side” – the “human endeavor” – of Operational Excellence, rather than the forensic details of the tools (including those of Lean Six-Sigma and the like). I do this mostly because I feel that…
I’ve been on numerous plants tours over the past few decades. Eventually the tour winds up in either the warehouse or stockroom or both. At some point, I’ll ask whether they’re tight on space and inevitably the answer will be something like “always”, or “we never have enough”, or the real killer “yes, but we…
