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I don't know if any of you are in the manufacturing business, but the big fad nowadays is called "Lean Manufacturing." In other words, doing more with less (for example, combining cabinets or moving shelves to make less walking or less motion, etc). One of the ways they motivate people to think lean is to have them come up with 5 ideas that would make our jobs easier or faster or more productive, etc, and implement them ourselves with as little cost to the company as possible, and f you come up with 5 ideas, you get Orange Belt Certified (a really good thing to put on your resume), and you get a check for $500!! Well, I submitted and implemented my 5 ideas, so tomorrow I get my official certificate and money (along with some otehr people). Yay!
I know it doesn't mean much to most of you, but it's cool to me.
I am happy.

Well congrats!

Almost everything you said was over my head but your accomplishment sounds great!!!

PurpleMustReign wrote:I don't know if any of you are in the manufacturing business, but the big fad nowadays is called "Lean Manufacturing." In other words, doing more with less (for example, combining cabinets or moving shelves to make less walking or less motion, etc). One of the ways they motivate people to think lean is to have them come up with 5 ideas that would make our jobs easier or faster or more productive, etc, and implement them ourselves with as little cost to the company as possible, and f you come up with 5 ideas, you get Orange Belt Certified (a really good thing to put on your resume), and you get a check for $500!! Well, I submitted and implemented my 5 ideas, so tomorrow I get my official certificate and money (along with some otehr people). Yay!
I know it doesn't mean much to most of you, but it's cool to me.
I am happy.

Congrats Josh. Buy please, don't tell me you're involved with 6 Sigma.

Sounds like you work for a company that values input from their employees in a real and tangible way (instead of just using it as slogan for marketing and recruiting purposes). Congrats on the brainstorming. Would be interested in knowing what the 5 ideas were if you were so inclined to divulge that.

Kansas Viking wrote:Congrats Josh. Buy please, don't tell me you're involved with 6 Sigma.

No kidding. My mom is a black belt at 6S and it seems like the most worthless new age crap ever.

Enrage wrote: No kidding. My mom is a black belt at 6S and it seems like the most worthless new age crap ever.

It is. 6S is the biggest pile of ... well you know.

6 sigma deals with a lot of things that don't apply to most manufacturing places (mainly perfect environments that almost never exist). My company tried that before, but it made things worse. It was actually kind of fun to see that kind of thing blow up in their faces

Mr. X wrote:Sounds like you work for a company that values input from their employees in a real and tangible way (instead of just using it as slogan for marketing and recruiting purposes). Congrats on the brainstorming. Would be interested in knowing what the 5 ideas were if you were so inclined to divulge that.

It's really almost dumb in a way how simple the ideas are, but the point is that if everyoine came up with 5, things would be much simpler (obviously some things are a little more complicated than that but you know what I mean)>

My ideas won't make much sense to you all, but I will share them anyway:

1. Little magnetic marker/pen holders to put with our dry erase boards (which don't have a "trough" on them to hold them like most boards do). You can imagine how often those markers would walk away without a place to put them that was a close to the boards as possible. Total cost: about $2 each (times 50 or so). Saved money on new markers, plus much less frustration than looking for markers all the time.

2 & 3- Three ring binders that hold our travelers and other documents (there were two different sets of documents that kept getting lost, so I got 3-ring binders that stayed either with the jobs or at one specific spot on the manufacturing floor). Total cost: about $3 each times 30. Total savings: less time looking for the docuiments and things looked neater without all the paper floating around.

4 & 5- simplifying and arranging some cabinets and inventory areas. Trust me, these areas looked hellish before. It was impossible to find tooling and components before, plus we'd run out of stuff since no one could find it, or we'd have TONS of it since it would keep getting ordered. Total cost: about $1,500 total. But man, it saves tons of money now that everything is in order and easy to see. I'll post a picture tomorrow at work. We have a good before and after shot.


Anyway, it's pretty easy stuff. Plus that kind of stuff is fun to me, especially when you can see obvious results right away.

my company does this too but they are too cheap to give you anything extra

which is why the(Brownie button /pat on the head method) is bringing so much success

and great ideas