Resources listed on this page:
- Articles of Interest
- FastCap Principles
- 7 Wastes
- FastCap Morning Meeting Agenda
- Gemba
- Milestones to Market
- Plastic Prototypes

Resources

Articles of Interest

Builder Uses Kaizen - Hard Work, Fair Prices Allow Irish Immigrant to Succeed
Kaizen and TPS at ThedaCare - Keen to Be Lean
Gemba Panta Rei Blog - a blog to find and share better ways to make things better
The Secrets of TPS - by Gemba Consulting
Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative Kaizen Improves Patient Care
Group Health Cooperative Kaizen Blog by Lee Fried
Lean machine: Health care follows auto's lead, gears up for efficiency

Web Sites

FastCap Principles

1. The purpose of FastCap is to Grow People. (Uncover your hidden potential…) Become the Best Problem Solvers in the World
2. FastCap is always looking for ways to make things…Faster, Simpler and Safer.
3. Whenever we walk away from something, we should…"Leave It Better Than You Found It!"
4. Your job title is…Process Engineer. Your key responsibility is to Improve the Process.
5. Each of us has an immediate goal by the end of the day to …Make Two Seconds Worth of Improvements in everything thing you do.
6. We always Use a Person’s Name when addressing each other in our facility and at least 2x in the first minute in every phone conversation.
7. Enjoy your day to the fullest by….Doing the Hard Things First.
8. If you want to know what the real issue is, we must….”Ask Why 5x”.
9. When there is a problem, we should always…Go and See - don't just talk about the problem, experience and look at it…Action This Day!
10. Your success at Fastcap will be determined by the fact that you are Never Satisfied with the state of your performance and are Relentless About Improvement.
11. We have learned that Toyota's success is the result of the relentless pursuit of…Building a Culture and that's what applying these principles will achieve.
12. Hold each other accountable.

7 Wastes

The term “Lean” manufacturing was popularized by Womack and Jones in their book “The Machine that changed the world”. This book benchmarked manufacturing companies around the world and found, at that time, that Japanese manufacturing companies were typically much more productive and efficient than their Western counterparts.

A few years before the “The machine that changed the world” came out Taiichi Ohno had published a book called “Toyota Production System” in it he explained the main foundations of “lean” manufacturing. These principles guided the Japanese companies that were found to be “world class” by Womack and Jones. Taiichi Ohno devised 7 categories which cover virtually all of the means by which manufacturing organizations waste or lose money; these have become known as “The 7 wastes”.

Waste is the use of resources over and above what is actually required to produce the product as defined by the customer. If the customer does not need it or will not pay for it then it is waste, this includes material, machines and labor. The Japanese word for waste is “muda” and is often used in books, training courses and by lean consultants to mean waste.

The 7 wastes described by Ohno are:

1. Overproduction and early production producing over customer orders, producing unordered materials / goods.
2. Waiting hanging around, idle time (time when no value is added to the product).
3. Transportation handling more than once, delays in moving materials, unnecessary moving or handling.
4. Inventory - unnecessary raw materials in stores, work in process (WIP), & finished stocks.
5. Motion - movement of equipment or people that add no value to the product.
6. Over-processing - unnecessary processing or procedures (work carried out on the product which adds no value).
7. Defective units producing or reworking scrap.

But the biggest waste of all is... Untapped human potential!

Morning Meeting Agenda

• Gather and Start Meeting @ 8:00 am and announce next meeting leader.
• Announce the amount shipped the previous day.
• Read and discuss mistakes.
• Read off improvements.
• Review the Safety Board.
• Read, discuss and review historical topics.
• Review FastCap Principles.
• Walk & Stretch.
• Go to work and do the hard things 1st!

From gemba.com...

Gemba Research is a global team of professionals dedicated to teaching kaizen and Lean management practices based on the Toyota Production System. They deliver rapid results while building your team's capabilities to make persistent improvement a reality.

Kaizen is both a philosophy and a systematic approach to improving processes. This approach can be learned by everyone and applied everywhere.

Lean Management is based on developing people who are problem solvers focused on serving customers and improving performance through waste elimination.

The Toyota Production System (TPS), which is better understood as the Thinking People System or simply the Toyota way, enables operational excellence by creating an organization that values and respects people and their creative abilities.

Gemba is the Japanese for " actual place" and in business terms it is where you create value for your customers through daily work. Gemba is the place to go for improvement.

Milestones to Market

• Determine - What is the need or desire that your idea will fill?
• Define - How will this idea fill that need or desire?
• Document - Begin the process of keeping a journal of your idea and its development in an inventor's notebook or the electronic equivalent. Check out (http://prbell.powweb.com/joomla/ )

The design

• The design criteria (I want the product to do this...I want to make certain the product doesn't do that...) – refined as the subsequent steps are taken.

The prototype – proof of concept

• Quick & Dirty versions - Cardboard & duct tape or built from existing components...just enough to "prove the concept" or to communicate the idea to others for assistance. (Remember to document alterations and learning experiences in your inventor’s notebook)
• Incremental improvement (some do-it-yourself and sometimes with professional help) (Remember to document alterations and learning experiences in your inventor’s notebook)
• Determine your turf. Search for existing patents or products which might have patent protection on one or more aspects of your idea so you can avoid - and design around - aspects of their designs and cause you to infringe on existing patents.

Designing for market

• Designing for manufactureability (a tweak here and there can save tons in manufacturing costs. Done by a product development company who specializes in this type of engineering)
• Designing for marketability (sexy shapes, colors, materials.) With help from design and materials engineers, Focus Groups & feedback from prospective retailers.
• Designing for packaging (products with a large protruding appendage can mean increasing the cost of packaging, shipping, storage and even presentation/success at point of purchase. (store shelf or display) Sometimes you change the design of the product to prevent marketing or shipping nightmares.
• Designing for safety. (pre-empt expensive rework by thinking ahead...choking hazards, liability insurance, unsafe materials, sharp edges, difficulty cleaning or maintaining, etc)

Intellectual Property

Research existing products and patents...you can’t patent an idea if it has already been done. You can’t build a product if it is covered by an active patent.

• Do your initial patent searches yourself.
• Get a professional patent search done before hiring any lawyers or engineers...could save you a bundle (An exhaustive and professional patent search should cost in the neighborhood of $500)
• Product searches. If they are not patented in the US, but they are -- or have ever been -- in the marketplace - even overseas - you can’t get a patent. (You can make and sell them; you just can’t exclude anyone else from doing the same.)
• Patent Application (Provisional application or full-fledged patent application)
• Non-disclosure agreements (the clock doesn't start yet.)
• Public Disclosure (the clock starts here)

Marketing

Determining your market

• Who would retail these? (Major retail outlets? Internet Marketing? Specialty shops? Trade shows?)
• If retail, do they have fixed vendors? (Many major retailers assign shelf space only to major vendors who provide all of the various products and product lines for that entire section of the store...Go into a major box store looking for dog toys and even though there may be 200 products, there will only be one or two vendors for that whole section of the store.)
• Do you sell to their vendors or to the retail stores themselves?
• Who will be your sales person?
• How will he/she get in to see buyers? (a big hump to get over)
• Focus Groups (Consumer feedback on the product and on the packaging are very enlightening)
• Packaging (Environmentally friendly, present the product well, compelling, fit retailer's merchandising, can be shipped for reasonable money)
• Elevator pitch (develop your 3 and your 33 second pitches.)

Profitability

• Determine viability (cost to produce versus market value)
• Liability insurance – Product
• Legal assistance – Patents, Incorporation, Operating Agreements, Contracts
• Research - Patent search company, focus groups,
• Engineering assistance
• Setup costs – Manufacturing – Sales – Warehousing -

Manufacturing

• Will you produce products yourself or have them manufactured for you? (Some products lend themselves to start up manufacturers and others do not.)
• Will you manufacture the product on-demand or will you carry an inventory? (If you are planning on having them made in China, you will have an inventory...and possibly a whole shipping container at a time)
• Some products are considerably more viable if they are made overseas...others not so much.

Distribution - things to consider about delivering products Note: Excessive price and failure to make deliveries on time are the #1 and #2 causes of unwanted competition for your product.) You need to be equipped to fill orders promptly. Also, many major retailers have very specific shipping demands. How many to a pallet, how high they can be stacked, which freight companies you can use. Don’t underestimate this step. It is more complex than it appears.

• Stock
  • If the product is small, do you want a basement or garage full of these things?
  • If the product isn’t small, do you have Warehousing capability?
  • If they are coming from China, where will you put a container quantity of product?
• Boxing & packing? Have space for inventories of boxes? Fill materials? Room and table space to pack and fill?
• Shipping channels (ready access to commercial freight companies? UPS/FedEx pickup?)
• Shipping facilities (Forklifts? Loading docks? Palletizing?)

Plastic Prototypes - Fast, Low Cost

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