Saturday, February 28, 2009

From the other side of the table...

On my first job as a product development engineer for music systems, I was enthusiastic about work as any newbie would be. I had a senior colleague who had spent years developing music systems for the consumer goods industry. He was very successful at developing great music systems within the specified timeline.
Sometimes, he would sit on the other side of his desk and spend few minutes looking at his desk. He would also come to work on weekends and spend the entire by himself in the department. Often I asked him why he did that. He would reply that it gives him a new perspective of the project he was working on. He would go back in with fresh ideas and design better music systems.
I never understood how the "alone time" he spent helped him. When I started working with Lean tools, I realized the importance of stopping or slowing down to get a better handle of the project or to make problems visible.
The concept of andon lights used to stop the line to fix a problem in a lean enterprise explains how this tool can remove waste of scrap, defects and rework.

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