• Course fees are flat fees; you can send as many employees as you want.
• Your only other expense will consist of the handout materials, which are yours to keep. We can get them printed and bound for you or you can photocopy and distribute them yourself.
  
• Courses can be scheduled at your convenience, any day of the week.
• Courses can be delivered to your second shift as well.
• We are local to Northeastern and Eastern Pennsylvania and there are no overnight travel costs for services in those areas.
• Includes but not limited to Luzerne County, Lackawanna County, Carbon County, Lehigh County, Susquehanna County, Wayne County, Wyoming Couny, Northampton County, Columbia County, Schuyllkill County

1. Why Lean Enterprise?
• This section shows how to sell lean enterprise to upper management and to the front-line manufacturing workers who have to make it happen.
• Proven results in "the language of money" for upper management.
• Lean enterprise's role in protecting jobs and creating higher wages for front-line workers.
• "Meet Your Real Instructor" or, "Who do you think taught Japan how to make cars?" Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota production system, got his ideas directly from Henry Ford.
• Manufacturing is the foundation of national prosperity and military security.
2. Lean Fundamentals
• This section introduces the concept of friction, waste, or muda. This is the foundation of everything that happens in a lean enterprise. Friction is easy to overlook and it often becomes built into the job.
• Basic definitions: Toyota production system's seven forms of waste
• False economy as waste
• Value analysis and the process flowchart: identification of value-adding and non-value-adding activities
• Transportation as a non-value-adding activity è spaghetti diagrams and factory layout
• The improvement cycle: standardization, best practice deployment, and continuous improvement (kaizen)
• Closed-Loop Corrective Action è project completion, standardization, and best practice deployment
3. Lean Techniques
• This section introduces specific techniques for suppressing friction or waste.
• Design for Manufacture (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA)
• Group technology
• 5S-CANDO
• Visual controls and visual production management
• Small-lot and single-unit processing è Cycle time reduction
• Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED)
• Error-Proofing (Poka-Yoke)
4.  Lean Production Control
• Push versus pull production control
• Kanban
• Synchronous flow manufacturing (SFM) and the Theory of Constraints (TOC)
• Role of linear programming (LP) under TOC: identification of constraints and optimization of the product mixture.
• Suppress variation in arrival and processing times to reduce inventory and cycle time in queue.
• The matchsticks-and-dice experiment in Goldratt and Cox's The Goal shows why 100% utilization "cannot" be achieved in a balanced factory.
• This course reconstructs the techniques Henry Ford used to achieve close to 100% utilization in a balanced factory!
5. Supply Chain Management
• Extension of lean manufacturing to the supply chain è a lean enterprise
• Every supply chain element must add value
• Suppliers must be capable of just-in-time delivery
• Supplier development = teaching suppliers lean techniques
• Freight management systems (FMS) and third party logistics (3PL) systems
6. Lean and ISO 14000
• Lean manufacturing is synergistic with the ISO 14000 standard for environmental management systems (EMSs), as well as with ISO 9000.
• Henry Ford made enormous profits by avoiding or finding ways to reuse environmental waste.
7. Change Management
• Organizational psychology/ organizational behavior aspects
• Changing the company culture: "How we do things around here"
• Benefit of the kaizen blitz
• The need for upper management commitment
• Lean does not mean downsizing. Cutting jobs when workers improve productivity guarantees failure of the transformation. This is a very important consideration when it is necessary to get a union to buy into lean.

1. The Theory of Constraints
• The capacity of any manufacturing process is limited by its capacity-constraining resource (CCR)
• Time lost at the constraint is lost forever
• Identifying Herbie (the constraint)
• Similarities to program and project management
• CCRs have no excess capacity and critical path activities have no slack time
• Elevating a constraint (increasing its capacity) can move the constraint elsewhere, and crashing an activity (paying a premium to shorten its completion time) can alter the critical path
• Variation makes it difficult to achieve 100 percent utilization in a fully-balanced factory
•  The matchsticks-and-dice simulation from Goldratt's and Cox's The Goal
2. Performance Measurements
• (Deficiencies of the cost model
• Marginal costs and revenues
• Material and overtime are the only true variable costs
• Time lost at the constraint is lost forever. Rework or scrap in the constraint, or scrap after the constraint, cannot be made up so Six Sigma-level quality becomes particularly important.
• The throughput model: performance measurements for TOC
• Throughput
• Inventory
• Operating costs
3. Production Control: synchronous flow manufacturing (SFM). SFM supports lean manufacturing by reducing cycle times and keeping inventory levels low.
•  Just-in-time (JIT) production control methods
• JIT and UniCo's warehouse. Henry Ford described JIT very explicitly in 1922. Ford's "clockwork" system and takt time.
• Kanban
• SFM Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR)
• Using DBR
4. Elevating the Constraint
• Techniques (most are synergistic with lean manufacturing and/or quality management systems)
• Single-unit flow
• Work cells instead of "farm" layouts, especially regarding heat-treatment
• Total productive maintenance (TPM)
• Single-minute exchange of die (SMED)
• Staggered breaks and meal times
•  Innovative process redesign
• (Wasted constraint capacity is irreplaceable. Quality assurance methods protect the constraint from nonconforming pieces.
• Go/no-go gages and error-proofing (poka-yoke)
• Design for manufacture (DFM) and Six Sigma quality
• Linear programming (LP) to optimize product mixtures and model the effect of increasing the capacity of a constraint
• The slack variable shows each operation's excess capacity. It is zero for the CCR(s)
• The shadow price shows the differential benefit of elevating a constraint
5. Variation Reduction (a unique element of this course)
• Variation in processing and material transfer times make it impossible to achieve 100 percent utilization in a balanced factory (one in which all the operations have the same capacity)
• Henry Ford succeeded in running a balanced factory at close to 100 percent capacity.
•  Subdivision of labor
• Use of conveyors or work slides to transfer work across short distances
• Go/no-go gages and error-proofing (poka-yoke) to prevent nonconforming work or at least keep it out of critical processes
6. Conclusion: TOC and Your Factory
• Is your inventory just-in-time or just-in-case?
• How is your plant's performance measured?
• Identifying the constraint: per Ford, a pile of work-in-process (WIP) in front of an operation indicates a problem.
• Does your constraint work at full capacity?

• •Introduction: Statistics and Quality
• Variation and accuracy (These concepts cannot be overemphasized and, if your workforce understands them, it will appreciate the utility of SPC)
• Variation sources: common and assignable causes
• Basic Statistics
• Sample statistics
• Sampling and the rational subgroup
• Hypothesis Testing
• Risks of making an incorrect decision
• Using Control Charts
• Types of control charts
• Control vs. specification limits
• Sampling and plotting data
• •Process Characterization
• Estimation of process parameters from historical data, and setting control limits
• Tests for data fit to the normal (bell curve) distribution
• Measurements of process capability
• SPC and Plan-Do-Check-Act
• Standardization and best practice deployment
• Closed-loop corrective action

This day-long overview of Six Sigma is designed primarily for manufacturing and quality engineers. Copies of the overhead transparencies plus additional notes will be provided. Learn more about Six Sigma here.

1. What is Six Sigma?
• Enterprise-wide perspective, deployment, and leadership
• Business Systems and Business Processes
• Process versus functional concept (embodied in ISO 9000:2000 as well)
• SIPOC = Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Customers (synergistic with lean supply chain concept)
• A measurement-based system for identifying opportunities for quality improvement
• Gap analysis
•  Disciplined project management
• Cross-functional teams
• Closed loop corrective action
• Standardization and best practice deployment
2. Six Sigma Management Concepts
• Six Sigma teams: Champions, Black Belts, Green Belts, subject matter experts
• Project definition and project charter
• Synergistic with other cross-functional teams, such as those used for the Ford Motor Company's TOPS-8D (team-oriented problem solving, eight disciplines)
• Project management (uses traditional project management tools like PERT-CPM and Gantt charts)
• DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) Problem-solving approach
• Another form of PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), and thus synergistic with traditional quality improvement methods
• Change management
• Importance of management commitment
3. Variation
• How variation affects quality
• How variation affects productivity: variation and the Theory of Constraints
• Variation sources: Man, Machine, Method, Materials, Measurements, Environment
• Techniques for assessing and reducing variation
• Traditional quality tools: check sheets, histograms, Pareto charts, cause-and-effect diagrams, scatter diagrams, control charts
• Lean manufacturing tools for reducing variation in production rates
• Design for Six Sigma (next section) will cover robust design for minimizing the effects of variation.
4. Six Sigma Technical Concepts (synergistic with Lean)
• Six Sigma process capability, and defects per million opportunities (DPMO)
• Designing for Six Sigma process capability
• Statistical process control
• Rolled throughput yield (RTY)
• Design for Six Sigma
• Taguchi's Robust Design
• Economic Tolerance Design
• Design of Experiments (DOE)
• Response surface analysis
• Evolutionary operation (EVOP)