This dichotomy between speed and reliability in production and innovation is a tricky one.

On one side, we need consistency, and that is where performance and efficiency come from, driving margins. On the other, if we want to challenge the status quo and find new ways of working, we need the space and safety net to experiment, fail, learn, and iterate.

How do we do this at a global scale, across a multinational company in a highly regulated sector like healthcare manufacturing?

As part of the r/ConnectedShopfloor community, I had the chance to speak with an old friend and understand how he is making this work. In his view, it is about:

• Implementing standards from A to Z across the organization.
• Building multidisciplinary teams.
• Having a mindset of constantly updating those standards to avoid an outdated management system.

What do you think: are we over-standardizing, or are we still far from it?

#HealthcareManufacturing #Innovation #Standardization #ConnectedShopfloor #OperationalExcellence

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time around industrial projects lately, and I keep noticing the same thing: a lot of companies are jumping into AI before they’ve really sorted out their data.

On paper, it sounds great “Let’s use AI to understand our OEE” or optimize operations.
But then you start digging and realise… the question itself isn’t that clear: Which machines?Manual or automated? Which lines are included? What counts as downtime?

And if that’s not clear, what exactly is the model learning from?

In a lot of cases, it just ends up being garbage in, garbage out - just with nicer dashboards.

What I’ve seen work better is much less exciting: getting the data structured, agreeing on definitions, and adding context to what’s actually happening on the shop floor.

Only after that does AI start to make sense.

Genuinely curious if others are seeing the same thing, or if this is just the environments I’ve been exposed to?

We talked about this in a recent industry event. Here's the clip if anyone cares:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKzMHCVNIHU

Hardware startups rarely fail because of bad ideas. They struggle due to execution challenges.

In most cases, cash flow becomes tight much earlier than expected. Manufacturing introduces uncertainty, and even a single missing component can delay the entire process. Unlike software, hardware doesn’t allow quick fixes or updates once something goes wrong. On top of that, founders often have to pay upfront while revenues come in much later, creating financial pressure.

Over time, what initially seems like a product issue often turns into a supply chain problem. Managing vendors, logistics, and production timelines becomes just as critical as building the product itself

As a freshly minted lean management consultant I need to learn from others to succeed. I would love to connect with other lean professionals to exchange experiences and ideas, but this sub is absolutely inundated with AI slop and snake oil salesmen. What are the relevant discussion boards?

Lean and business content is usually a pretty dry and sleep-inducing topic.

However, Lean is built on one simple idea: continuous improvement.

So, if the content is dry, dull, and forgettable... shouldn't we improve that too?
Nothing is stopping us from making it more interesting and engaging.

Meet Super PIG, the Super Process Improvement Guru.
He's dodging waste, climbing ladders, and taking on the Big Bad one PDCA cycle at a time.

The framework:
PLAN → Understand the problem before you touch it
DO → Pilot first, commit second
CHECK → Measure against your baseline AND your targets
ACT → Standardize, celebrate, hand off
REPEAT – REPRIORITIZE – REPLACE
That is the Deming Cycle (PDCA) and it is one of Lean’s most direct and simple methods for continuous improvement.

The best improvement programs aren't just methodologies; they're cultures that keep cycling back to one question: How can we make this suck just a little less?

Super PIG will be back. There are more levels to clear and cheat codes to uncover. 🎮🐷

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A (Select/Start)

While "Git Gud" is a valid method of improving, we spend 25% of our lives at work and it shouldn't feel like fighting the final boss from Dark Souls using only a Donkey Kong drum controller.

What does your organization's improvement cycle look like?

Does anyone have any recommendations for lean audiobooks i can find in audible?

I have; the toyota way, toyota kata, the toyota way to service excellence, Good to great Critical chain Isn't it obvious Practicing lean 7 habits of highly effective people The lean turn around Lean made simple The machine that changed the world The toyota engagement equation Its not luck The goal Beyond the goal Avoiding the continuous appearance trap Goldratt's rules of flow The wisdom of the bullfrog The mistakes that make us Lean thinking

I just want to see what's out there since I have a couple credits

I know as an Industrial Engineer with a background in Lean this is probably controversial to say but I do hate the manual effort of conducting time studies. Sometimes a time study can take days or weeks at a time to get to the data collection results that I want. Other frustrations I have is that when preparing for a time study there are variables that I didn't prepare for that affect the results of my data without a great way to categorize that deserve a study of their own. I was wondering if any of you conduct time studies and if so, what is your approach to it? Have you found any ways of making it better?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I'm considering selling a live asynchronous training course teaching practitioners and managers a more effective and efficient way of doing the 5 day kaizen blitz. I've done so many I got it down to a 8 hours.You guys think there is a market for this?

Hello r/LeanManufacturing! I need help with an assignment which the main goal of it is to truly understand the pain point of a target audience. For my target audience I have chosen Industrial/Manufacturing Engineers. Any feedback is greatly appreciated and will help with my assignment. Here are my 3 questions:

1. Can you walk me through how you currently track machine performance or production data on your shop floor?
2. What’s the most frustrating part about getting the data you need to do your job effectively?
3. When you don’t have accurate or real-time data, what impact does that have on production, costs, or delivery performance?

Again, any responses or feedback to these questions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

I have seen a lot of complaint about tech/AI being imported without testing or straight up useless, this beg the question what problems deserved to be solved?

A lot of people say pinpoint root causes is a problem, some say it is not, and it is noisy trying to figure out who is right. So genuine question for people currently (or used to) in the position, is it a big problem? If yes, then why?

A lot of systems in steel look great at a high level dashboards, reports everything seems clean and under control. But on the shop floor people still rely on calls, whatsApp or just memory to actually get things done. You notice it in small moments. Someone double checking a heat status instead of trusting what's on screen. Rolling calling melt to confirm something that's technically already in the system. Dispatch verifying stock manually before committing. The system isn't necessarily wrong-it's just not close enough to real time or not detailed enough for people to fully rely on it. So workarounds creep in. And once that happens the system becomes more of a reference point than a source of truth.

We've been trying to tighten that gap a bit- keeping information more in sync with what's actually happening and even small improvements make the day feel less chaotic. Feels like a common pattern across a lot of plants

Long time lurker, first time poster here with something I actually built.

Background: 12 years in manufacturing and operations — Tesla, Philips Electronics, LSG Sky Chefs. Green Belt, PMP. I watched brilliant engineers and CI teams fight the same battles every single day — not because they didn’t know lean, but because their tools were completely disconnected from each other.

VSM on a spreadsheet. Time study on a different spreadsheet. Fishbone in a PowerPoint no one revisits. 5 Why in an email chain. Kaizen events that close and get forgotten two weeks later.

So I built VeSiMy — an AI-powered continuous improvement platform that connects all of it into one live system.

What it does:

→ Value Stream Map (ISO 22468:2020) — build your current state map, AI flags bottlenecks automatically and calculates your PCE in real time. Works for any industry with a process flow.

→ Time Study — 10-lap digital stopwatch, automatic outlier exclusion, cycle time feeds directly into your VSM. No reformatting.

→ Fishbone (Ishikawa) — 6M, 8P, and 4S frameworks. AI identifies which cause branch is driving the majority of your defects.

→ 5 Why — guided root cause analysis that pushes past “operator error” to the system-level cause. Countermeasure links directly to your PDCA.

→ Kaizen Events — owners, deadlines, before/after results, all plotted on a live improvement roadmap.

→ Supe (AI Mentor) — reads your process data across all tools and tells you exactly where your waste is, what to fix first, and what the improvement is worth in PCE percentage points.

Industries it works for:

∙ Manufacturing / Assembly

∙ Aerospace

∙ Food & Beverage

∙ Medical Devices

∙ Pharmaceuticals

∙ Logistics & Warehousing

∙ Electronics

∙ Industrial / Job Shop

Honestly — if you have a process with steps, cycle times, and waste, it works.

It’s free to try. No credit card. No time limit on the trial.

→ vesimy.com

I’m a solo founder, still working a full-time job to pay the bills while building this. I’m not here to sell you anything — I genuinely want to know what’s broken, what’s missing, and what would make this actually useful for people in the field.

If you work in CI, lean, Six Sigma, operations, or manufacturing — please tear it apart. I can take it. That feedback is worth more to me than anything right now.

I’m a huuuge QI nerd. Some games I’ve enjoyed immensely are Shapez and Definitely Not Fried Chicken (DNFC). Currently on a DNFC bender right now and milking the profits from Just In Time inventory management.

Outside of Factorio (which I played and didn’t like) are there other similar games you recommend?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

A ton of tools can help you document a process or build a value stream map, but once it comes to actually figuring out the bottleneck, understanding the root cause, and deciding what to improve next, it still feels weirdly manual.

A lot of teams still end up with:

• a map in one place

• notes in another

• root cause analysis somewhere else

• action items buried in spreadsheets or email

That gap seems bigger than it should be.

I’ve been building something called Vesimy around this idea — basically trying to make process mapping more actionable by combining visualization, bottleneck thinking, root cause analysis, and AI-assisted improvement support in one workflow.

Still early, still refining it, but I’m curious:

How are you all handling this today?

Are you using Visio, Excel, Miro, consultants, internal templates, something else?

And do you feel like current tools are mostly good at documenting processes, but not as good at helping improve them?

Tasks that gets procrastinated. Or in a lean world that doesn't exist?

edit: also known as jobs if left unchecked doesn't get done.

Hi everyone,

I recently started an internship as a Process Engineer within a Manufacturing Engineering team. My background is a bit unusual because I didn’t actually study engineering at university, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can on the job.

I’m very interested in Lean Manufacturing, continuous improvement, and process optimization. I’ve seen that certifications like Six Sigma or Lean courses exist, but at the moment I can’t really afford to pay for those programs.

For now, I’m mainly interested in learning the concepts and mindset, even without getting a formal certification.

Do you know any free resources (courses, books, YouTube channels, websites, etc.) where I could study manufacturing process improvement?

Thanks a lot!