PERSPECTIVES
What’s your PI tax rate?
Algorithms for excellence exist in
business, even if the research to validate
them statistically is tough to come
by. A key ratio in such a formula is the
amount of time and money an organization,
site or team invests in formal
process improvement. In your company,
how much time does your average
team member spend at work on
project development, data analysis and
idea generation?
Is just in time production dead?
Author and humorist Mark Twain was famously quoted in the late 19th century as saying “The report of my death
was an exaggeration” after being asked by a newspaper reporter about his reported demise. The Wall Street
Journal headline also qualifies as an exaggeration.
Control towers integrate digital supply networks
During an IISE webinar in March, I spoke about the rapid evolution of supply chains and how companies can
achieve excellence. While we could not predict COVID-19 and its impact, it was clear 20 years ago that advancing the
field of supply chain would require that all parties involved have real-time access to a single version of the
truth. So while the pandemic accelerated the supply chain evolution, the increasing level of VUCA – volatility,
uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – over the last two decades has made the transformation inevitable.
'FLean:' A flexible Lean production system
A manufacturer is Lean when it can execute all the processing steps to produce any product in its mix without
waste at any operation or between consecutive operations in that product’s routing.