Over the years, we’ve asked people if they love writing standard operating procedures (SOPs). Their answer is almost always NO !!! SOPs (AKA work instructions or written procedures) are the lifeblood of standard work and continuous improvement. How can something that basic to operational excellence be […]
Industry has embraced continuous improvement for at least a century. Arguably, it started with Frederick Taylor and evolved to Six Sigma and beyond. There were many advances, and a few fads, in between. Still, Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is a common refrain: But that’s hampered when […]
A New World of High Resolution Cameras We see footage from convenience store security cameras … usually in a police report or plea for citizen help … and the videos are colorless, grainy and lack detail to see the action clearly. It’s hard to imagine […]
For 20+ years I have heard objections to the use of video surveillance technology to routinely view and record factory (and warehouse) operations. Setting aside the fact that every facility routinely records security video, it is common to hear that “cameras are not allowed” or […]
A new concept in manufacturing is the prospect of “Industry 4.0”. It’s a factory where the new technologies (automation, digital communication, Internet of Things, cloud, etc) are integrated into a complete production system. The following YouTube video from Siemens makes it seem pretty real. What […]
When most manufacturing companies, indeed most companies of any type, think about “video surveillance”, they automatically think about security, theft and personnel monitoring. Then, they buy security systems and video surveillance systems to collect massive quantities of video like the following examples. Feel free to watch an entire […]
In my last post, I showed a way to extract detailed operational data from a video clip of human-paced operations. With a customized Dartfish Tagging panel, it was pretty easy to pull data to validate a descriptive probability distribution for the task. As I did […]
A growing number of operations and factory designers use sophisticated discrete simulation tools to test their facility layouts and designs. For major design projects, software systems like the following are often required. Siemens Plant Simulation Software Rockwell Arena Simulation Software These (and similar software packages) […]
In a previous post, I described a novel way to use video to capture visual evidence of process variation and make it far more evident to potential stakeholders. The technique used the Dartfish Analyzer video blending feature from the Dartfish video analysis software. The resulting […]
A lot of process variation occurs over extended periods of time. You can see that something may be happening, but the quantity and nature of the variation is not obvious. The following clip (from our friends at Hartybake) shows a conveyor system that is carrying balls […]
