How ZARA Revolutionized the Fashion Industry with Lean Practices

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ZARA changes its clothing designs every two weeks, offering 11,000 distinct garments annually. In comparison, competitors change their designs every three or four months and produce 3-4,000 distinct pieces. This is fast fashion: the business model of replicating high-fashion, luxury-brand pieces quickly and cheaply, making them available to customers while the trend and […]

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Using Kanban to Streamline Processes and Improve Efficiency

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Kanban is a tool used in Lean Manufacturing to visually manage the workflow through your processes. It is based on the concept of a pull system where things are only replaced as they are consumed.ย 

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Navigating the Mechanics and Calculations of Pull Systems

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Does your organization use a pull or push system to allow your manufacturing function to meet your customers’ demand for your products? Letโ€™s learn why a pull system might be a better approach for optimizing your organization.

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Achieving Excellence Through Quality Management

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The strategy of continuously improving your organizational processes by setting your goals, identifying deviations from those goals, and then taking appropriate actions to adjust your processes to close the gaps.

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Streamlining Production with Just-In-Time Manufacturing

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Have you ever had to shut down your manufacturing line because major components havenโ€™t arrived from your supplier? Have you ever had to rent extra warehouses for your finished goods? Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing would prevent that from happening. Letโ€™s see how that works.

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Make Work Visible: Add a Gemba to Knowledge Work

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When we leave the shop floor and enter the back office, we might think that peopleโ€™s desks are where they work. Weโ€™d be wrong. Their workbench, their tooling, their line โ€ฆ is in their heads. This means that most knowledge work (information technology [IT], legal, management, product design, finance) is invisible. My colleague Tonianne tells […]

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Personal Kanban [Video] – With Jim Benson

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Kanban is a Japanese word that translates into “signboard” or “billboard,” and is a tool developed in Lean manufacturing but applied to any process. It is a visual scheduling system that allows a teamย โ€“ for any processย โ€“ to know what needs to be done, what is being done and what has been done. Kanban can […]

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