The workshop yesterday was excellent; well planned out and very interactive. The first half of the morning, we had introductions and a simulation of a company where we had to physically manufacture two types of clocks in a production line. I was the worker on the line that snaps in the back plates on the clocks.  We had to try and manufacture our forecast in 15 minutes. The teachers designed the line and it was intentionally a total disaster.  After the simulation we went back to the classroom and discussed the flaws in the line and then they lectured about a few principles of lean.  We then tried a different design where some of these principles were implemented.  The line improved a little bit but, we did not ship any of the products out and had high defects. 

The next have of the class, we had a lecture on more principles and the class had to design the production line.  We had to take into consideration, material, labor, and facility costs when designing the layout.  The line was better but there were two major bottlenecks and too many supervisors meaning 28 people trying to design one line was disastrous.  Anyway, we went back to the classroom and compared the first two simulations to the third.  Then, the teachers designed a line implement all the principles related to the specific needs to the production of this product:

      1.                   FIFO

2.                   Pull system instead of a push

3.                   Color coding everything

4.                   Having Kanbans at the beginning and end of every cell

5.                   Instead of scheduling, have a visual system where shipping makes the decisions as far as meeting due dates

6.                   Implementing the 5S system

7.                   Having no WIP on the floor

8.                   Reducing paper work

9.                   TPM- Having system where all the equipment is maintained and serviced

10.               Reward employees and have employee recognition

11.               Having standardize instructions at every workstation

12.               Inspect for defects at each workstation

And more….

I would recommend that work shop.  Comment: Carlos has really done an excellent job at implementing some of these principles already whether he knows that they are lean principles or not. Anyway, thank you again.