Group items tagged

Improving and Implementing Safety Lean Manufacturing Safety Lean ManufacturingWhen people look at facility improvement opportunities they often look at process improvement methodologies, such as Lean Manufacturing. Another thing that is commonly reviewed is facility safety improvements. In many cases, however, they don't see that using lean manufacturing techniques can often also provide safety improvements. Thinking about safety lean manufacturing will allow you to make improvements throughout your facility in a way that will not only reduce waste and increase profitability, but also help improve safety at the same time. The following are five examples of how lean can directly improve safety within your facility. According to DesignSafe's document on, Integrating Safety and Lean Manufacturing Safety must not be viewed as a separate activity that is a non value-added effort with objectives contrary to lean concepts. Elimination of waste can also be interpreted as the elimination or minimization of risk that adversely affects wasted human resources and lost time from injuries. Lean imperatives of faster, better, and cheaper must encompass the issue of running safer as well. Safety Lean Manufacturing - Top 5 ways to Combine Them 1. Eliminate Overproduction to Reduce Unnecessary Interaction with Machines Safety Lean Manufacturing OverproductionOne important focus for lean manufacturing is the elimination of over production. While this is mainly done to help eliminate waste, it will also make for a safer facility because people won't be working on the machines as much. Any interaction with the machine is an opportunity for an accident, so this is a good move for safety too. Look also at the fact that when people are spending more hours working at a machine, they are likely to be more fatigued, which increases the risk for accidents and injuries. 2. Listening to Employees Improvement Ideas One of the trademarks of a good lean manufacturing program is t

A report by the AmericanManufacturing.org website and a recent Pew Research Center article both focus on the discordance in opinion between the general public and elite economic and legislative policymakers on the threat of China to U.S. jobs and fiscal matters. Chinese Manufacturing The general public, who largely contributes to the tax and voting base and to the domestic economy and workforce of the United States, is not accurately being represented by these "elite" lawmaker, financiers, and economists, according to these two articles. Despite a growing insecurity by the American public and advice from former military leaders, many of our elite financial, political, and historical leaders have remained strangely blinded by the large scale offshoring of U.S. jobs to the China, not to mention the growing debt we have incurred from them. The loss of domestic manufacturing jobs is almost directly proportionate to the increase in Chinese manufacturing jobs, and it is difficult to understand that this fact is hard for "elite" minds to grasp - from the very obvious U.S. Dept of Labor statistical evidence offered below: U.S. manufacturing employment in January 2000: 17,292,000 U.S. manufacturing employment in January 2012: 11,860,000 Annual U.S. trade deficit with China in 2000: $83.8 billion Annual U.S. trade deficit with China in 2011: $295.4 billion I think these stats say a lot about our country's current economic state, and I'm not sure why our politicians, economists, and corporate leaders are choosing to ignore them. Or, maybe they know something we don't. Wait, that is starting to sound like a crazy conspiracy theory.

Jeff Moad's article "Manufacturing's Profile Rises, But Not Among the Young" on the Manufacturing Executive website ponders a recent survey by Deloitte, LLP and the Manufacturing Institute between "old school" views of manufacturing in America versus the younger generation's apparent lack of faith in manufacturing as a base for our country's economic stability.

When most people think of LEAN, they think of manufacturing, and it is no surprise why. A recent post by Mark Bridges in the "Lean Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement Group" on LinkedIn, brings up the idea of using Lean strategies in an office environment. His post looked specifically at how the office side of a manufacturing company can benefit from Lean concepts. His ideas, however, can be applied to any office environment. Taking active steps to eliminate waste can save companies money whether it is eliminating excessive inventory made by a manufacturing line, or eliminating the need for excessive drive space on an email server due to unrestricted storage policies. Northcote Parkinson's Theorem One of the most interesting parts of his post discussed what is called the Northcote Parkinson's Theorem. This theorem states that, "…Over and above a certain size, an office style organization can generate enough work to busy itself with!" This is a simple way of saying that while office work may be necessary, it can easily become a bottomless pit of inefficiency. One can't help but recall the scene from the movie, "Office Space" where the manager drones on and on about the importance of "TPS Reports." This scene is so memorable to many people who work in office environments because it is so relatable. So, how can lean help to eliminate 'TPS Reports' and other forms of inefficiency in the office environment? The post and the comments people made agree that Lean manufacturing strategies can be used in office environments with minimal adjustment. This is a perfect example of waste in the office, and how Lean strategies can help to avoid them. Office environments print off reports, spreadsheets, emails, and any number of other things. Many employees have the idea that as long as they recycle the paper when done, it isn't wasteful. While recycling may be better for the environment, it really doesn't help the company's bottom line. In

On the A Lean Journey blog, Tim McMahon offered up the reins to Lean Six Sigma writer, Kathryn Thompson, about a case study in lean manufacturing and six sigma. Inappropriately titled "The Successes of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma: A Case Study," Thompson's post is sparse on details and any data backing up the claim that Midlake Products is a decent model for lean and six sigma. No disrespect intended toward Ms. Thomson, but this article is NOT a case study. It reads more like a press release for Midlake Products. Thompson's post gives a summary of this company's lean six sigma background and links to their website which, for all intents and purposes, is devoid of any significant examples of how they implemented lean or six sigma and what the pros/cons included. A case study is something that gives a reader some indication of a need for improvements, the processes implemented, and results. They are important documents for anyone who is contemplating starting a program and looking for basic firsthand perspectives from professionals in their industry or comparable production models. If one were to desire a real case study on the matter, I'd recommend this one from Lean Enterprise Institute for starters. It lays out the information in a more traditional way.

When running any sort of physical production based business, you will often have stock on hand. Instead of only stocking for a short time, there will be a "backup" supply of products that can be called upon as demand changes. This is known as "just in case" manufacturing and is highly common in most industries. However, several decades ago, the rise of lean business gave way to the concept of "just in time" manufacturing. In a just in time, or JIT, system, products are made as they are demanded and there is little to (ideally) no back-stock at any time. Why go lean? The idea behind JIT manufacturing is that one can eliminate several kinds of waste by taking away the need to keep inventory of excess stock. From now on, equate "stock" to "excess stock" or the concept of having too much on hand, because in a JIT environment "stock" doesn't really exist outside of individual orders. When you don't have to keep inventory, employees free up their time for other projects and tasks. Also, you have less paperwork to manage, and can focus on other things, like workplace safety, new profitability angles and marketing strategies, etc. Another reason to go to a JIT model is that you increase accountability of management. Because you have no inventory to fall back on in a JIT situation, inventory cannot be used as a crutch to make up for other problems. Slow, inefficient production is often masked by a stockpile of inventory, making it harder to realize certain areas of production may need improvement - these may include machine functionality, worker habits, reliability, and inadequate space management. Another huge place you save by adopting this method is in transportation. Materials do not need to be stocked at various sites and you need to do much less transporting. You will eliminate time wasted in transit when there is traffic or road congestion, and you'll even be more environmentally friendly by reducing fuel burned for shipping purposes

The GHS and You - 5 Big Changes April 10, 2014 by Tony Ferraro If your workplace handles chemicals, particularly as the initial producer or as a distributor to clients, it's time to familiarize yourself with the global harmonization system (GHS) of classification and labeling chemicals, or the GHS, for short. What is the GHS? The GHS, first proposed to the United Nations in 1992, is an attempt at bringing some uniformity to the chemical labeling procedures of the developed world. Member nations, based upon their own time-frames, signed on to promise to convert to the GHS method of labeling chemical substances by a certain date. The idea was and still remains to make international business and production easier by having chemical labeling procedures that wouldn't slow down import and export, and would be easy for everyone involved to understand. This also greatly reduces transport costs as materials aren't having to be re-labeled or re-inspected as they cross borders. Last, but certainly not least, the GHS protects workers by ensuring the risks of handling any given material are clearly stated in an easy to understand manner from the beginning. According the UN's publishing of a GHS guide, the following are succinct statements of the GHS' most important goals: Defining health, physical and environmental hazards of chemicals: Creating classification processes that use available data on chemicals for comparison with the defined hazard criteria; and Communicating hazard information, as well as protective measures, on labels and Safety Data Sheets (SDS). OSHA.gov - GHS What does this mean for me? In the United States, the time-frame for adoption is staggered over several stages. On March 2012, the final rule for how workplaces should adopt their policies was published, and employees were required to be trained on these new procedures by December 1, 2013. Interestingly enough, the adoption of the standard by product manufacturers is not required until Ju

3-D printers, the article explains, can make prototyping and customizing easier, which creates a less wasteful manufacturing environment. Additional benefits of 3-D printers are they can increase the consistency of products and ultimately lead to lower prices.

I read an interesting article today about safety by Mari-len De Guzman on Cos-Mag.com, an occupational safety e-magazine for Canadian manufacturers. At the CSSE (or, Canadian Society of Safety Engineering) conference in Niagara Falls this week, Los Alamos National Laboratory safety expert, Todd Conklin, spoke about how many manufacturing and industrial companies look at safety issues. He pointed out that, rather than continually blame operator-error for most failures and safety problems, it is more systemic, stating that: workers get hurt when they find themselves in situations where it's hard to be safe and easy to get hurt. With that in mind, he offered several potential causes for failure or safety incidents and ways to combat them. First, he said that humans make mistakes, so he advised that it is important to anticipate those potential mistakes and have several levels of defensive safety measures. Next, he suggested that companies should anticipate that unforeseeable events can happen, and WILL happen, so employers and safety managers need to keep this in mind. Learning is another tip Conklin pointed out. Whenever something bad happens, the best defense next time is to learn as much as we can from the event. We can learn many things, like defenses, unsafe speeds, too much load, proximity to dangerous equipment or products, etc. Finally, he also advised managers to approach safety or failure issues (and the operators involved) with caution. He warned that being positive and asking things in a proactive manner can give a much better reply or response, as follows: Instead of asking a worker, "what have you done, now?" ask them, "how do we set this up so failure doesn't happen again." By asking the right question, employers can get a more operational-centric answer. I really thought this was great info. It might seem like common sense to some, safety matters and needs to be one step ahead of the production line. I also more or less agree with Con

Lean manufacturing is a method used in factories to enhance productivity. As part of lean manufacturing, 5S strategies are quite common sense and you would expect the posters to be easily accepted in an organization. However, it is not that easy to change working habits. As a result, factory managers may decide to use lean posters to make the employees understand the need for lean practices. What is 5S? This is a strategy from the Japanese that stands for Sort, Systematically Organize, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. For a successful lean program in any organization, the management must make sure that all stakeholders understand the process. The best way of educating people about lean practices is through lean posters. After the workers have adopted the practice, the posters act as reminders as well. There are many types of lean posters that management can use in factories. These posters are very essential for reminding everybody about the 5S program. Let us look at some of these posters. Management may use strategic lean posters with the aim of encouraging the workers to work towards a common goal. These posters mainly focus on employee behavior; how to change it for the better. For the best results, it is important for management to align such posters with the organization culture. Do you have programs or initiatives that the poster is promoting? If not, you might as well not bother because the poster may not benefit you much. Posters can also be used to motivate the workers as they continue with their duties. These types of posters have been around for many years, and they are quite effective. However, the effectiveness of such posters depends on whether they are relevant to the people. For a factory that is implementing lean practices, using lean posters is a cost-effective way of educating the workers and reminding them of the firm's commitment to reach its goals.

Ron Pereira over at the LSSAcademy.com offered a really cool video that pits regular mass production vs. one piece flow, and his simulation produced a time savings with the one piece flow. In his video, what I found to be as interesting as his presented material were the comments at the bottom by professionals in manufacturing. They all seemed to think that one piece flow definitely has its place, and that it CAN be more efficient in certain contexts, but most of them also pointed out that, from a batch processing point of view, one piece flow doesn't save any time when it comes to actually delivering the product to customers if the customers are in the same place. For example, if you are folding, stuffing, and stamping envelopes, but they all have to go to the same post office to be mailed, there isn't really enough of a time saving compared to the possible amount of trips to the post office under a per piece system. Someone else also mentioned the idea of spreading each step in the one-piece flow out to several people vs. to one person, and the savings in time would not be outweighed necessarily by the fact that, now, several people are needing to be paid, instead of the one person. Either way, I think, under certain circumstances (like building full sized dump trucks with different customers), one piece flow is definitely a time saver and waste reducer than building a ton of dump trucks and running the risk of some of them not being sold. Plus, envelopes are way easier to simulate than building a bunch of dump trucks.

Eliminate Losses When looking for ways to improve the profitability of a manufacturing facility it is important to look at the things you have the most control over. While it would be nice if you could just double the number of orders you have to fill, that is typically not going to be possible. What you can do, however, is look at how you can eliminate losses that eat away at the bottom line. There are six big losses that most manufacturing facilities experience. While it may not be possible to completely eliminate these losses, it is typically possible to take steps to reduce them quite significantly. When done properly, this can help ensure your facility operates more efficiently, which will have a very positive impact on the overall profitability of the company.

Dead Sea Mud Products Cleopatra is known to be 'a woman of surpassing beauty' having seduced two powerful Roman leaders. What were her secrets that made her a legend of beauty? There were no complete cosmetics or beauty salons during Cleopatra's reign, only the Dead Sea as her natural health and beauty spa. The Dead Sea is known for its unique minerals and salts, which can regenerate and nourish the skin. Not only the waters, but also the black mud found in the Dead Sea, are beneficial to the skin. The mud is a rich, homogeneous mixture of the sea's minerals, such as magnesium, calcium, boron, strontium, iron, and potassium. When applied to the skin, it can improve blood circulation, cleanse, and soften the skin, leaving it looking healthy and plump. Aside from skin therapy for common skin problems, Dead Sea mud has been found to treat skin diseases such as psoriasis, joint problems such as arthritis and rheumatic pains, relax muscles, and improve inner calmness and tranquility. The mineral-rich mud, although best experienced naturally, is being used to manufacture products containing essential minerals for the skin. These products range from body wraps to mud masks, exfoliates, and creams. Body wraps are basically done to envelope the body in warm, mineral-rich mud from the Dead Sea. The mud is evenly distributed and can reach all the problem areas. This procedure can result in relaxed muscles, moisturized and nourished skin, and improved skin elasticity. Body wraps are usually done at the spa, but a number of products have been manufactured to experience the same treatment at home. Home treatment can be done by placing the Dead Sea mud in the microwave up until it is warm enough for the skin to tolerate, applying it to the body, leaving it for half an hour and rinsing with warm water. Facial masks made from Dead Sea mud creates a seal over the skin. The face becomes warmer, the pores release sebum and toxins and at the same time, they absorb the

the group is nice , thanks builder,i will update my blog often.

CNCAPS is a professional hats and caps manufacturer from China,mainly produce fedora hat,straw hat,panama hat,drinking hat,sequin hat,newsboy hat etc.,With more than 10 years' experience in custom hat manufacturing,our dedicated team can provide you a one-stop custom hat solution.

अमीर बनने का सपना हर कोई देखता है। लेकिन सिर्फ सोचने से कोई अमीर नहीं बनता। लोगो अपनी जरूरत पूरी करने के लिए नौकरी तो करते हैं। परंतु य‍दि आप देखे आराम की जिंदगी जीने वाले, और अमीर लाइफ स्टाइल जीने वाले दुनिया के अमीर लोग Business करते है।

When people think about personal protection equipment, they typically think about hard hats, steel toed boots, and safety goggles. One of the most commonly used types of protective gear, however, is fairly normal looking protective apparel. Protective apparel from KleenGuard is used in many industries ranging from medical labs to manufacturing facilities and offers an excellent first line of defense from a wide range of different hazards that are commonly found in the workplace. Look Like Normal Work Clothing or Uniforms The apparel from KleenGuard is designed with safety first in mind, but it is also made to look and feel nice so employees will be happy to wear it. In fact, many people don't even realize that this type of apparel is a form of protective gear that is keeping them safer while at work. Depending on which apparel is chosen, these items can be buttoned up, zipped up, sealed with tape, or slipped right on to allow easy preparation at the start of a shift. Types of Protection KleenGuard makes a full lineup of protective apparel, so looking at each individual item is the best way to learn about what types of protective features it offers. The following, however, are some of the different ways that KleenGuard protective apparel help to keep those who are wearing it safe: Liquid Barrier - The material is made to stop liquids from soaking through and coming in contact with the skin. This is important when working with biological liquids (body fluids, etc.) or when working with chemicals that could cause skin irritation. Particulate Barrier - Stopping particles of materials from getting through the clothing is an important feature. Tiny particles of wood, metal, fiberglass, or other very small materials are kept away from the skin to avoid irritation or other issues. Antistatic - The material resists the buildup of static, and passes the NFPA 99 criteria for this feature. Avoiding static is important in many industries and can be a key safety featur

Lean has been helping companies streamline their production, eliminate waste, and generally improve the way things are done for many years. Initially, the concepts behind lean were primarily used only in companies and facilities that were directly involved with physical product creation, such as manufacturing plants, factory floors and things of this nature. However, over time the lean methodologies have been adapted and implemented in almost every other type of business, ranging from health care to information technology, and many more. When done properly, lean can help improve virtually any work environment to help eliminate waste, improve communication, and to help ensure that the products or services being developed are indeed something customers will be interested in. For instance, when working in an information technology environment, it is important to be able to understand how lean strategies can be implemented, and why they are so important. The following are some of the most significant reasons why lean IT strategies should be taken seriously by any company that uses technology in their business (which is almost all of them!). Lean Promotes Ownership One of the things about lean strategies in an IT environment is that virtually every task completed is owned by an individual. Even if a person does not do all the work for a particular project, he or she will be directly responsible for overseeing it. This creates a sense of ownership, which can help in a variety of ways. It will give other teams a single point of contact for obtaining updates, providing feedback, or requesting changes. This will also allow the owner of a specific project to drive the progress directly, rather than having to rely on large committees or other types of groups to receive pertinent information. It is important to note that just because one person owns a process or project does not mean that he or she can simply dictate things to other groups. Instead, that person is there to

A swimming pool is a very good addition to any home as they add luxury and a place to cool off during hot sunny days. You should note, however, that swimming pools are just as dangerous as they are fun if the proper safety supplies are not implemented during use. One can easily drown in a swimming pool if you are not careful enough to follow good guidelines such as not swimming alone, and not diving headfirst into any pools that are not extremely deep and allow for diving. This holds especially true if you are not a good swimmer. You should therefore make sure to have safety products and supplies on hand at all times when using swimming pools. It is also wise to ensure that there is some form of supervision when the pool is being utilized. You can employ the services of a professional life guard or have a grown up look after children who are using the pool. You should note that the life guard should also implement the use of safety products and supplies irrespective of how good they are at swimming. Safety supplies for swimming pools start with exterior elements that ensure the pool is safe for use. You can start by putting up a fence and gate. Such steps to ensure the safety of small children who might wander into the vicinity of the pool is especially important. As well, safety supplies are very effective in restricting access into the swimming pool for others who might not appreciate the dangers. This will ensure that unauthorized persons who are not well experienced in swimming can not access the pool without authorization. You can also opt to put a cover over your pool. This will ensure that your pool is not contaminated by debris. It also prevents people from falling into the pool when it is not in use. Other safety supplies include floatation devices. Floatation devices can either be worn or used separately, such as when one holds onto the device and/or lays atop of the floatation device. Floatation devices come in very many shapes and sizes all dependin

Farmingdale, NY based risk management company, EtQ, and moderator Quality Digest are presenting a risk management webinar on October 10, 2012 episode of Quality Digest Live at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. EtQ's company website is dedicated to creating quality risk management solutions, and has this to say about its stance on its software products: EtQ's Quality Management Software is an integrated quality and compliance management software system that has been pre-configured to specifically address the needs of the Manufacturing industry and ISO 9000 processes. The webinar on Wednesday offers proactive information and ideas to professionals saddled with risk management duties in their company. The webinar is slated to tackle such lofty goals as to demonstrate how to successfully implement risk management as a strategy - not only as a "post-production event," in which best practices application risk factors can be assessed and targeted not only toward processes, but also to products.