Downsizing Lot Sizes - A GBMP Lean Training DVD

As customers, we expect perfection in quality and delivery - and we don't expect to pay extra for it. But something mysterious happens when we enter our workplaces and become suppliers instead of customers. Now we are governed by supply side rules which place our needs ahead of the customers'. Policies like AQL and EOQ rationlize quality standards and provide incentives to provide products or services that the customer does not need. We do these things to "optimize" and to be "efficient" - however we are actually erroneously thinking that such practices will reduce costs and increase profits. In the name of these programs and profit improvement we end up "standardizing" product and service offerings, thereby limiting customer selection. Customer-first thinking, a keystone of the Toyota Production System, nots simply that we should provide the customer's exact order immediately with perfect quality. But a lot of companies have status-quo policies that obscure that view. "Downsizing Lot Sizes - A Dozen Eggs" illuminates customer-first thinking by taking viewers on a trip to the supermarket to buy the ingredients needed to bake a cake. The scenario raises questions regarding quantity and quality from a customer's standpoint. How many eggs are needed to bake the cake? How much flour? How much supply-side thinking in contained, for example, in units of measure like one dozen eggs or five pounds of flour. Using direct observation of familiar tasks and viewer participation techniques, "Downsizing Lot Sizes" detaches viewers from the conventional supplier first view point that thwarts many lean iniatives. In just 36-minutes, policy makers and those who must execute those policies will learn how to think like the customer.

Reducing Lot Sizes

Lean Training DVD

GBMP

Toyota Production System TPS

lean six sigma