2021-Jul/Aug; Trust Me, I’m an Engineer
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Defuse the Process Bombs by Kelvin F. Cross
The directive was clear, “You have a week to find a way to defuse our ‘process bombs.” This was the challenge put out by the new Vice President at a Fortune 200 company upon inheriting a business process fraught with delays and errors. It is amazing what a sense of urgency and an aggressive deadline will…
Leadership Through Public Speaking
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” “When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the chards and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them…When I was sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, How soon unaccountable I…
COVID-19; Blame is for God and Small Children
Unless you are a person that firmly believes there will be a second wave – or even that there might be a second wave – the reactions and measures taken to the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to calm down and the world is beginning to unwind the measures that have been put in place; albeit…
Finding & Managing Bottlenecks in Process Plants
One of the primary objectives of Lean is to achieve smooth continuous flow of material through the process. If there are bottlenecks within your process, they can inhibit flow, cause inventories, and prevent throughput from matching customer demand (Takt). In order to make progress towards Lean goals, bottleneck resources must be identified, managed and improved. From a…
The 5 Essentials of Operational Excellence
A Confusing Start to My Own Operational Excellence Pursuit Officially, I began my operational excellence pursuit almost 45 years ago. However, I did not know it at the time. Between 1985 and 1990, I was at work in my first true operational excellence workplace. My first two employers were traditional manufacturers. This third site was…
How to Move from Strategy to Execution
Summary. Three out of every five companies rate their organization as weak on strategy execution. When you dig into the potential barriers to implementation, there is a general lack of understanding of the various factors at play, resulting in the inevitable managerial justifications — “poor leadership,” “inadequate talent,” “lack of process excellence,” etc. This article…