You are here: Lean Six Sigma Home » Archives for January 2008

January 2008

Visual Management and Self-Reliance

by Pete Abilla on January 25, 2008

One of my primary goals in life is to teach my kids to be eventually good, productive, and self-reliant adults.  One area of life-skills that my wife and I are focused on in teaching our children, is teaching them the principle of work: how to work, the value of work, to take ownership over their [...]

{ 6 comments }

I’m Nobody Special, But I’m Speaking Anyway

by Pete Abilla on January 22, 2008

lecture on lean manufacturing and six sigma

Yes, my face is on the front cover of the brochure (PDF Download).  But, little does the audience know that that picture (I’m the second, from the left, but better viewed in the PDF brochure) was taken while I was sitting on a fake sheep during a family trip to the animal farm at Thanksgiving [...]

{ 0 comments }

Takt Time and Dumber-by-the-Minute

by Pete Abilla on January 17, 2008

takt time calculation, example

I remember a very humbling experience of thinking that I knew how to solve problems and being shown just the opposite by an hourly associate.  That was during my internship while I was in graduate school; I was haughty, boasting that I came from a top university and demonstrating in my thoughts and body language [...]

{ 1 comment }

The Hidden Factory: Would the Customer Pay for That?

by Pete Abilla on January 14, 2008

The Hidden Factory is a term that refers to activities in an operation or standard operating procedure (SOP).  A few examples of Hidden Factories are workarounds, rework, or any of the 7 wastes, which I will describe below.  Most organizations have some form of a Hidden Factory and being able to “see” these hidden factories [...]

{ 5 comments }

Overmanaged and Underled

by Pete Abilla on January 13, 2008

As I mature and become more aware of the subtleties of business, I am slowly learning the meaning of Leadership.  For most of my career and, in part, my education, I have aimed to be become the best — technically — in the field of Operations, Logistics, Supply Chain, Lean Manufacturing, and Six Sigma.  I [...]

{ 8 comments }

Representing an Idea with Visual Identity

by Pete Abilla on January 9, 2008

visual management, brand identity, floppy disk

My daughter recently turned 10 years old.  So, because her friends have email and communicate via email, I recently helped her obtain an account.  In the process, we both learned something very important about abstract ideas and the icons we use to visually represent them. My daughter attempted to create a “Contact List” of people [...]

{ 4 comments }