Boeing Solid Waste to Landfill Sorting Event (Dumpster Dive) at Everett from April 2015

This video was posted on the Boeing website in 2015 to share a trash (waste) sort event at their Everett facility with their 747, 767, 777 and 787 production lines. The goal was to collect data and determine which team is diverting the most trash from the landfill. The winning team was the 777 program,

Lean and Six Sigma Are Not Just for Manufacturing Companies

If you’ve ever wondered whether your work group could be more efficient, provide better customer service, produce a higher quality product, cut costs or generate more revenue, perhaps the place to start is an honest evaluation of the core processes that make your organization tick. Process improvement initiatives began years ago with private corporations in

Interview with Keivan Zokaei

As part of our expert series, I asked Keivan Zokaei to answer some questions I had about his involvement with Lean and Green activities. How did you get started in Lean methodology? I first began in 2002, when I was doing a Master degree at Warwick University in the UK. I had seen lean tools &

Use Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP) to drive sustainability

If you have a small or mid-sized company in the United States (or Puerto Rico), and are in the manufacturing industry, there is a Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) available to help you. MEP Centers are a diverse network of state, university-based, and non-profit organizations, offering products and services that help manufacturers increase profits, create jobs
shingo prize lean green business system

“Creating a Lean and Green Business System” earns 2014 Shingo Prize

The Shingo Institute has awarded Keivan Zokaei, Hunter Lovins, Andy Wood and Peter Hines with the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for their work “Creating a Lean and Green Business: Techniques for Improving Profits and Sustainability.”   Creating a Lean and Green Business System is an excellent book that demonstrates the close link between eliminating

Tips to green your lean event

Applying lean and six sigma into your company can have considerable environmental benefits, even if that is not the original intent of the event. The elimination of waste can have a positive impact on the environment through reduced materials, reduced travel distance, less overtime (reduced lighting and equipment use) and right sized containers for material

Why you need to learn about nonparametric statistical tests

The method you choose for analyzing your data could cause you to draw incorrect conclusions, causing extra data collection, waste and frustration. Most statistical analysis use parametric tests (t-tests, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation, etc), but there are some limitations to these tests. More often than not, the nonparametric tests (Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, Kendall’s Tau, etc) may be

Book review for “Lean Sustainability”

Order “Lean Sustainability: Creating Safe, Enduring, and Profitable Operations” by Dennis Averill >>> The book provides practical, detailed, real-world examples that no other book provides, which integrates safety, health and environment (SHE) with lean and sustainability, known as “Lean, Green and Serene”. Averill introduces another concept, “Triple Zero” which is the goal of zero accidents, zero incidents,

Lean and Green is Free, But its Not a Gift – Lean Blog

In this article, Keivan Zokaei shares his thoughts on Mark Graban’s Lean Blog site. He says that the environmental movement is heading down the same path as the quality movement did in the 1980’s. A famous book from Philip Crosby in 1980 was called “Quality is free: The Art of Making Quality Certain”. He reminds