operational excellence

Kimo Oberloh Joins LCE as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader

CHARLESTON, SC - Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) is pleased to announce that Kimo Oberloh has joined the company’s Reliability Consulting Group as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader. Kimo is a Lean Manufacturing Subject Matter Expert with extensive implementation experience in all types of manufacturing environments.

Kimo Oberloh Joins LCE as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader

CHARLESTON, SC - July 13, 2011 - Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) is pleased to announce that Kimo Oberloh has joined the company’s Reliability Consulting Group as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader. Kimo is a Lean Manufacturing Subject Matter Expert with extensive implementation experience in all types of manufacturing environments.

Life Cycle Engineering Launches Lean Implementation Services

CHARLESTON, SC - In response to requests from its clients in manufacturing and process industries, Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) has added lean implementation services to its consulting and services offerings.

A professional engineering firm with more than 30 years experience, LCE remains at the forefront of establishing Reliability Excellence as the preferred approach for companies seeking to improve their performance. LCE’s “Powered by Rx” methodologies are inclusive of critical lean concepts and tools.

Lean Manufacturing - Are you Ready?

Ron Moore

Innumerable books have been written about Toyota and their lean manufacturing practices. Literally thousands of companies have tried to emulate these practices, some with some short-term success, but most with little or no long-term success. Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way, at one point estimated that only about one percent of US companies are truly effective at applying lean manufacturing practices. Few achieve the high level of sustained performance embodied in lean manufacturing principles. Why is this?

New Textbook on Principles and Practices of Lean

The Lean concepts and principles described in this book have revolutionized manufacturing practice and business conduct in a manner similar to what Henry Ford’s system did for mass manufacturing. Lean production however, involves much more than the adoption of methods and procedures, it requires a change in management philosophy that emphasizes relationship building, trust, and responsibility being conferred to frontline workers and suppliers.

Shutdowns & Turnarounds from the Contractor’s Perspective

How to Help Contractors Provide the Best Service Possible

This paper addresses shutdowns and turnarounds from the perspective of what the plant owner can do to assist contractors in providing the owner with their best service, so he gets the best overall shutdown outcomes.

How Do Continuous Improvement Management Philosophies Relate to the Maintenance Function?

Most of us have heard terms such Lean Manufacturing, the 80/20 rule, TQM, TPS, Kaizen, 5S and TPM. They are all management philosophies that can be applied to the practical aspects of a business including the maintenance function, but quite often maintenance becomes a passenger in a businesses effort to apply new philosophies. This paper briefly explains some of the more common continuous improvement management philosophies and describes how they can be related to the maintenance function.

Informance Solves Analysis Paralysis For Manufacturers With Financial Module

NORTHBROOK, IL - Informance International, a leader in manufacturing business intelligence and enterprise manufacturing intelligence solutions announces the release of the Informance Financial Module, designed to help manufacturing executives quickly pinpoint which manufacturing inefficiencies have the greatest financial impact on the organization. Now, with Informance, manufacturers will be able to quantify the impact of each performance metric, analyze the cost of inefficiencies, and visualize the financial effect of changes or improvements in processes. Armed with detailed insight about the expected dollar value of different changes, manufacturing leaders can make more informed decisions and have tremendous confidence that their plans will have the desired impact.

Leadership for Reliability

Is Lean Maintenance a Religious Issue?

On a flight to the west coast from Philadelphia, I had the great opportunity to sit next to a Minister of a large church. We got to talking and I realized that he knew quite a bit about maintenance.

As a head of a church with a building and a school he had faced many maintenance problems over the years. He surprised me when he said that fundamental issues of maintenance and religion were related.

He said that when children are born, people pass away, or couples get married, there is no problem with getting people into church to pray. The problem he said is the decades between these events. It is hard to get people to come into the church when nothing of importance is going on. The time that is most important is the time spent building up the spiritual muscle to withstand whatever life has in store for you.

The Minster went on to say that when they had a leaking roof and minor floods after a string of spring storms, he had no problem getting money and congregational attention to fix the very visible roof failure, but he had no luck getting less money in the previous 2 years to fix the roof so it would not have leaked in the first place.

Many of our companies are just like that. They wait until after a crisis to consider maintenance seriously. One of the battles of the maintenance war is human nature. We out off paying for maintenance because we either don't believe there will be a problem or we don't want to think about the inevitable decline of the assets we are using. We might even consider this approach Lean.

It isn't in the long run.

Tip provided by Joel Levitt, Author Organizations interested in Lean Maintenance can listen to "The Introduction to Lean Maintenance" by Joel Levitt, available for free at:

Robins maintenance group wins silver in Shingo Prize

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. (AFNS)—Members of the 402nd Electronics Maintenance Group here has taken silver in the Shingo Prize, which recognizes world-class operational excellence strategies and practices in business and public sector/government owned facilities.

operational excellence

Kimo Oberloh Joins LCE as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader

Kimo Oberloh Joins LCE as a Lean Manufacturing Community of Practice Leader

Life Cycle Engineering Launches Lean Implementation Services

Lean Manufacturing - Are you Ready?

New Textbook on Principles and Practices of Lean

Shutdowns & Turnarounds from the Contractor’s Perspective

How Do Continuous Improvement Management Philosophies Relate to the Maintenance Function?

The Lean Dream

Asset Management, PAS 55 and its Link to Lean

Informance Solves Analysis Paralysis For Manufacturers With Financial Module

Is Lean Maintenance a Religious Issue?

FREE Audio Introduction To Lean Maintenance

MaintainIT Forms Alliance with LMSPI to Improve SC Manufacturing

Robins maintenance group wins silver in Shingo Prize

Linking Lean Manufacturing and Reliability