Daniel Penn

How To's

Read how Daniel Penn can help your business organization to continuously improve.

Maintenance Strategies in Manufacturing

We’ll cover the latest maintenance strategies manufacturers use, explain when each is optimal, and outline how you can decide which approach fits your plant’s unique needs.

The Chocolate Elephant

How do you eat a chocolate elephant? Well, the answer is easy and well-known – one bite at a time. The same is true when nibbling away at reducing lead time.

Components manufacturer streamlines the movement of parts, reduces idle time by more than 50%

By creating new workflows for support processes, the team eliminated nearly 740,000 feet per year of travel distance to move parts.

How Lean Practices Mirror Olympic Training

Your company’s Lean and continuous improvement teams drive organizational growth and excellence. While their critical role may often go unnoticed, these teams share traits with the world’s most elite athletes.

Part II: Set-Up Reduction for the Inserting Machines

Printing operation employees dramatically boost output and reduce scrap with set-up reduction events that improve flow, standardize work, and slash waste.

Apply a Lean Lens to Your Production Challenges

Daniel Penn Associates (DPA) is helping a large components producer apply a Lean lens to the production challenges that accompany their explosive growth.

Part I: Bindery Machine Baseline and Goals

Printing operation employees dramatically boost output and reduce scrap with set-up reduction events that improve flow, standardize work, and slash waste.

What it Really Takes to Control Inventory

Inventory control plays a critical role in manufacturing facilities. Proper spare parts management can reduce downtime, and increase profit margins.

Change Management Needs to Change

Why employees really reject change? DPA consultant Peter Harlamon shares strategies and tactics from his involvement in challenging labor-management negotiations.

Choosing the Right Maintenance Approaches for Your Organization

Daniel Penn Associates recently asked members of LinkedIn’s Association of Asset Management Professionals Group “What is the maintenance strategy that you use the most with your organization?”

How to get the most out of your company’s lean leadership training

Many senior leaders and senior staff do not understand the fundamentals of lean. It’s one thing to recite knowledge of lean, and another to live lean every day—both on the floor and in the executive suite.

Why do lean efforts fail?

In a social media and email survey, Daniel Penn Associates asked operations experts why lean efforts fail. Here are the seven most common reasons cited, with a sampling of participants’ comments.

Four Ways Lean Supports DEI and DEI Supports Lean

Lean is successful when we empower people to improve how they work together. DEI is successful when people understand and set aside preconceptions that pose barriers to teamwork. In today’s organizations, DEI supports Lean, and Lean supports DEI.

Kaizen team boosts packaging operation OEE by 66.5%

How an international manufacturer of materials for construction applications was able to improve operational excellence by 66.5%.

How to Tackle Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Original equipment effectiveness (OEE) is the product of availability, performance and quality. Knowing how to use these elements can help manufacturers improve operations.

What’s Missing from DEI Initiatives?

Filling in the missing pieces is not all that difficult. But the emotional content of these issues, a history of inequity and the inertia of organizational culture have exacerbated our challenges.

Operational Excellence and Energy Efficiency for Manufacturers

Daniel Penn Associates helps manufacturers implement Lean techniques that result in significant energy savings by reducing cost per unit produced.

Spare Parts Inventory Management – Part 2

A machine spare parts inventory system is every bit as important as inventory control for your manufacturing goods and materials.

Spare Parts Inventory Management – Part 1

Loss in your machine spare parts inventory will shut down your production every bit as fast as not having the goods you need to produce.

Creating a Maintenance Task List

Stay on track with your asset maintenance program. Stick to a step-by-step task list.

Who Moved My Supply Chain?

Streamline supply chain processes, develop alternate suppliers – and have somewhere to put the higher volume of goods.

How to Develop An Asset Maintenance Strategy

Often overlooked questions to help your teams improve and support your organization’s asset maintenance program.

Your COVID-19 Operational Plan Is More Critical Than Ever

Even with promising vaccines expected to be available, your organization’s focus continued vigilance, and rapid response is critical right now!

How To Make Your Virtual Kaizen Initiative a Success

Even with promising vaccines expected to be available, your organization’s focus continued vigilance, and rapid response is critical right now!

State of Remote Work 2020: How will it evolve? And how can we prepare?

without a ‘lean first’ planning approach, hasty investments in government automation and IT can increase waste.

How to Address Government Crises Today and Tomorrow? Lean First, Then Automate

without a ‘lean first’ planning approach, hasty investments in government automation and IT can increase waste.

Reinforce a Culture of Safety: Free Worksheets to Guide Your COVID-19 Operating Practices

Free worksheets to guide your facility’s practices and protocols as you continue or ramp up production for our ‘new normal’ under COVID-19.

Learn from the present, build for the future: What’s your warehouse and supply chain strategy?

U.S. supply chain experts are weighing in on what can be done to make our supply chain more resilient now and after the COVID-19 pandemic abates. How will your company adapt its supply chain to respond to future global shocks?

How to immunize your supply chain from global crises

The COVID-19 pandemic will continue to affect every part of society. While governments are rushing to contain its spread during this global crisis, manufacturers must satisfy customer demand while ensuring health, quality, and safety.

Lean Practices for Government Organizations

Government entities that truly apply lean thinking to their operations and processes can realize significant and sustainable benefits.

Understanding Preventive & Predictive Maintenance

If you ask ten people what their definition of Preventive Maintenance is, you will get ten different answers. The tasks range from very simple to fairly complex. What’s more, the manner in which they are performed and the depths to which they are carried out vary considerably.

Applying Soccer Discipline to Your Company’s Lean Daily Management

In a world of rapidly changing customer demands, your organization’s lean daily management activities and the game of soccer have much in common.

Dreading the Next FDA inspection?

If you’re responsible for pharma manufacturing operations – examine these six factors in your pharmaceutical facility’s process definition and controls.

Baseball and Operational Excellence

“Baseball is a simple game. You throw the ball. You catch the ball. You field the ball.” – Durham Bulls coach Larry Hockett, from the movie Bull Durham.

Banking’s Tech v. Touch Challenge (and what to do about it)

Technology should be deployed wherever it can create efficiencies and assist in the customer experience.

An Operational Nod to Anthony Bourdain

Sometimes operational lessons get reinforced by unexpected players. This one begins with a story surrounding the late great Anthony Bourdain.

What’s Missing in Your Hospital’s Maintenance Organization

Regardless of the industry, you’re in, effective planning and scheduling can have a profound impact on your maintenance organization‘s productivity.

Facilities Maintenance for Public Housing is More Than Just Maintaining Buildings

Facilities maintenance organizations must create and actively manage a comprehensive plan to reduce unnecessary costs and maintain quality.

Lean’s Two Key Ingredients

The rising cost of doing business is challenging us all to find ways to work more efficiently. Lean programs usually begin with good intentions…

How to get OCM Right: Questions and Steps to Lasting Change

Is your business contemplating operational change? Most organizational change programs fail is they don’t take thoughts and emotions into account.

What’s Your Maintenance Strategy?

Maintenance strategy doesn’t enter our non-technical brains unless it directly affects our productivity and well-being. The 5 basic maintenance strategies.

How to Boost Manufacturing Productivity

Organizations that apply lean thinking to their operations and processes can realize significant and sustainable productivity benefits.

Best Practices in Preventive Maintenance: How One Company Did It

A pharmaceutical plant I worked with excelled with their preventive maintenance program. What were the key drivers of their success?

Key Steps to Workflow Improvement in Maintenance

There are two things are essential to product quality and customer satisfaction: employees’ work and your equipment’s performance.

Are Cobots Part of Your Plant’s Future?

Will robotic automation be part of your company’s transformation? If your assembly operations are light, cobots should be part of its future.

What is Lean and Continuous Improvement?

It is listening intently to employees’ ideas. Converting them into doable alternatives. Then, helping everyone own the new process and move as a team.

Do’s and Don’ts for Making Process Improvements that Stick

What’s holding your maintenance organization back from making process improvements? The dos and don’ts for organizations that want to implement change.

Single Part or Multiple Part Operations

The optimal manufacturing setup for each product line drives the case for single part operations versus multiple parts or gang operations.

How to Make Your Plant Reliable

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the most cost-effective method your plant can use to develop an appropriate maintenance strategy with takt time.

The ‘Quick & Dirty’ About OEE

Much has been written about Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) but it is too useful not to revisit some of the key points.

What’s Your Maintenance Strategy?

What’s Your Maintenance Strategy? Maintenance strategy doesn’t enter our non-technical brains unless it directly affects our productivity and well-being.

How to Set Up a Lean Factory That Works

Lean manufacturers have a leg up on speeding products to market, reducing costs and keeping customers happy. In this overview, I’ll share how to engineer, set up and manage the project for a lean factory that works for your specific requirements.

How to Support a Proactive Culture in Your Facilities Maintenance Department

Facilities maintenance (FM) is often treated as a weak sister by healthcare facility management and doesn’t always get the respect or funding it deserves. Is your FM department properly configured to deliver its full value to your facility’s environment of care and its bottom line?

Distance + Prioritization + Pick Venue = Location

By optimizing your pick area for shipping operations you can reduce costs, speed products to market and increase customer satisfaction.

How much is ineffective maintenance costing hospitals?

Every dollar a hospital’s maintenance organization spends on unnecessary labor, equipment or processes erodes their service, reputation, and bottom line.

How to Balance Your Preventive Maintenance Workload

Are you tired of that month, quarter or year-end crunch to get your preventive maintenance (PM) work done? Minimize the chance of this happening again.

From hype to adoption: Is your maintenance program ready for the IIoT?

Maintenance Programs – what are the potential benefits of using the IIoT for your maintenance operation?

Out of Space? Maybe Not!

Are pallet racks full? Do flow racks appear to be fully utilized? Do aisles contain products awaiting put away or customer orders awaiting pick up?

Six Steps to Design a Preventive Maintenance Program

Preventive maintenance may seem a no-brainer, but if you make assumptions and cut corners, your results won’t match the effort. Follow these six steps and you’ll create an effective, efficient and sustainable preventive maintenance program for your facility.

Value Stream Mapping

Lessons from the Front – How can we make creating a value stream map, VSP, less burdensome and more relevant?

How to Set Up a Lean Factory That Works – Part 2

How Can a Lean Factory Tollgate Process Work? Here is a sample tollgate path for re-working your facility’s layout – or setting it up from scratch.

Why Preventive Maintenance Fails (and how to fix it)

Why preventive maintenance fails. If developing a preventive-maintenance program is such no brainer, why doesn’t every company have one in place?

12 Tips to Sustain Improvement in Lean Equipment Maintenance Programs

For companies that truly want to maximize their equipment uptime, productivity, and quality, a disciplined approach is critical.

Accountability Is A System

Accountability and reliability go hand in hand. Both rely on effective work management. Accountability is no more a one-person job than is quality.