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(+)+(+)
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+) The Lean Changeover e-letter
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+) Published monthly by Changeover.com
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+) Written by John R Henry, CPP
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+) DECEMBER 2008
(+)+(+)
(+)+(+) Replies, inquires and feedback to
<mailto:john%40changeover.com>john@...
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This newsletter is a free service of Changeover.com. Visit our website at
<http://www.changeover.com>http://www.changeover.com or contact me at
<mailto:john%40changeover.com>john@...

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be
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What do you plan to do in 2009 to reduce changeover losses? Is this
the year you are finally going to get serious?

There is no better way to kickstart a changeover program than my
"Changeover made ESEE" workshop. This 2 day workshop is a goldmine of
practical information as well as a hands-on putting the info to work
in your plant.

Call 787-550-9650 or e-mail john@... NOW to schedule a
session in your plant.

Line downtime costs $0000s/hour. How many dollars can you afford to waste?


SOME THOUGHTS ON...
BOOKS

Marx said "Outside of a dog books are man's best friend. Inside of a
dog it is too dark to read anyway."

Just to be clear, that was Groucho, not Karl, Marx.

I've been an avid reader all my life. I probably read about 50-60
books a year on a variety of topics. Some fiction and lots of
non-fiction including technology, history, bios, management and more.
There are very few books, perhaps none, that I have failed to learn
from. Some of this has been useful to my professional interests. Some
of it has been merely interesting. However, I tend to have a brain
like an attic with all sorts of apparently useless information
squirreled away. Every once in a while, and not such long whiles
either, I will be involved in a project, sitting in a meeting or some
other venue trying to figure out what to do and one of these ideas
will pop out. It turns out that it was not so useless after all!

Someone once said that it is not reasonable to expect a book to teach
you something on every page. Some do but they tend to be very few.
That same person also said that if you learn one new idea or way of
thinking about something, the investment in reading time has been amply repaid.

I was reminded while spending a week in a client's plant. Actually,
in the past month I've spent a week in each of 4 of the client's
plants. One of the things I noticed in 2 of the plants was that a
lot of people seemed to have books on their desks that they would
carry with them when going on break. In the break room, I would
usually see 3-5 people sitting reading while drinking their coffee of
eating their lunch. Nothing earthshaking in the way of reading
material. It was not like they were poring over technical manuals or the like.

I got to talking to one of the women reading and asked why it seemed
more prevalent in these plants than others I have been in. She took
me over to the corner of the break room and showed me a bookshelf.
The company had provided the bookshelf and employees had stocked it
with books from home. Nobody manages it, ideally, if you take a book
you are supposed to leave one but then some people leave extras so if
a book or two goes missing it is no big deal.

There was also a fair selection of magazines on a variety of subjects
that people had brought in.

And all the company did was provide a bookshelf. Seems like a pretty
cheap price to pay to get employees to read. Maybe it is something
you'd like to try in your plant?

Now let me anticipate an objection:

If employees are reading in the lunchroom, they are not taking this
opportunity to socialize with their peers. That is true and, if the
reading were carried to an extreme, it might (emphasize "might") be a
bit of a bad thing. On the other hand, we spend all our day talking
to our co-workers and sometimes just want a bit of piece and quiet.
While I understand the concern and agree that it could be a problem,
my thinking is that it probably is not.

So, do you like to read? If you are reading this newsletter, you are
probably interested in reading about changeover. There is not a lot
written specifically about it but here are a few books that you
should find interesting and useful:

How about some feedback? What books do you recommend on changeover,
lean manufacturing and other related areas? Send them to me and in a
future newsletter I will post a list. Let me know if I can use your
name or not. My default is not to use it but I do like to give credit
where due.

BOOKS

"A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System" by Shigeo Shingo,
www.productivitypress.com

This is THE book to read on changeover. Also see Productivity Press's
"Quick Changeover for Operators" This doesn't have any additional
information but is a simplified summary of the SMED book and very
useful for people who don't want to get deeply into the nuts and bolts of it.


"Kaizen for Quick Changeover: Going Beyond SMED"-Kenichi Sekine and
Keisuke Arai, 1992 www.productivitypress.com

This book discusses ways of improving changeover processes with lots
of illustrations and practical tips. It also discusses costs of changeover.


"Improving Changeover Performance"-S. Culley, A. Mileham, R. McIntosh, G. Owen
www.amazon.com

There are not many books dealing specifically with changeover in
packaging, printing or other smaller scale production processes. This
is far and away the best.


"The Visual Factory: Building Participation through Shared
Information"-Michel Greif, 1991 www.productivitypress.com

This book is about how to present information and physically organize
a manufacturing plant. A lot of the information can be used to help
make documentation of changeovers and procedures more readily
available and user friendly.


"Set-Up Time Reduction"-Jerry W. Claunch, www.amazon.com

This is an excellent book specifically about reducing setup times. It
take a holistic approach and covers a number of areas. You can learn
a lot from it.

"PI: How to Optimize Packaging Line Performance"-Paul J. Zepf, CPP,
1996, Institute of Packaging Professionals http://www.iopp.org/bookstore

This book deals specifically with packaging lines and covers a lot of
ground on how to optimize performance in a number of areas. One key
area, too often ignored, is actually measuring performance. There is
an excellent chapter on "Quick Change Process (QCP)"

"Safer Than A Known Way"-John S. McConnell

This is not one of the best books on the subject I have ever read.

It is THE best book I have ever read on the concept of quality. It
completely changed my thinking. It is a bit hard to find but well
worth the effort to search out a used copy.

And, for the grand finale, nobody interested in manufacturing can
afford to pass up Henry Ford's bio "My Life and Work". This book
tells how to design and operate an efficient company. You will find
almost nothing in the Toyota Production System that Henry Ford had
not thought of first. Hopefully Ford will go back to their roots to
get though the current problems they are having.

Buy it in a nice paperback edition with my intro at:
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=32476

Or download for free at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7213


TIP OF THE MONTH
REMOVABLE TRANSOMS

I was recently in a plant and noticed that the transoms over the
doors in the manufacturing area were considerably bigger than I was
used to. The doors were either single or double from about 36 to 72"
wide and probably 80 or 96" high. The transoms over the doors
extended another 4-6 feet. I commented on this and was told that they
were removable. When equipment needs to be moved into or out of the
room, the transom panel and cross piece can be removed with a few
screws. This provides additional access height on an as needed basis.

I thought it was a pretty neat idea.


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Best,

John R Henry CPP
www.changeover.com
787-550-9650
"All progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way." -
Lazarus Long