Copyright Patricia E. Moody 2024, All Rights Reserved

In Remembrance:

Robert "Doc" Hall, Feb. 2024

Nick Edwards, 1935 - Dec. 2023

Bill "Whizzer" Wheeler - April 2020

Romey Everdell, 2013

1997 Target feature: https://www.ame.org/target/articles/1997/unsung-heroes-and-other-manufacturing-pioneers; chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.ame.org/sites/default/files/target_articles/97Q1A1.pdfww.ame.org/sites/default/files/target_articles/97Q1A1.pdf

 Unsung Heroes and Other Manufacturing Pioneers, "Turn up your hearing aid - it ain't 'On Golden Pond'!" (Remark made by wife of factory owner, both attending (but not hearing) one of the 135 JIT presentations "Doc" Hall made in one year, 1984, at the Arizona Biltmore.)

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Need a break from the blue screen of death?  CLICK A DOSE OF POSITIVITYNESS 

Look closely (or click on the image) and you will see a heron on the rocks at Cordingly Dam in Newton, Massachusetts, not far from the Mass Turnpike Extension!  Photo by Jim Lawton, Chief Marketing Officer at Rethink Robotics. 

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                         Mr. Mookah comes to you courtesy of buytruckload.com.

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The Fifth Industrial Revolution, Manufacturing's Future

When Dick Morley and I sat down to write The Technology Machine: How Manufacturing Will Work in the Year 2020, we were 15 years out from the end date... we envisioned an enterprise connected machine to machine, sensor to sensor, with discrete information flows clicking along with minimum human tweaking...design and customer orders would drive the machines nearly simultaneously...one giant step for mankind...humans not be removed from the picture, but rather empowered by the technology. 

But not everybody buys into it...                                   

CLICK The Future of Manufacturing, and  

Robots Smash Records And Collide With Wetware

Morley on Steve Jobs

Praise from Art Byrne, former President, The Wiremold Company: "The new bible to improve any manufacturing company..." The best 4P Design for LeanSigma project The Mill Girl ever saw was at the Pella plant in Iowa ...annual productivity gains of 15 percent to 20 percent.  EXCERPT FROM THE PERFECT ENGINE.  

TO ORDER  CLICK  PAPERBACK

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Make chance your opportunity...

Cirtronics:  Building Enterprise Excellence - The company's Learning Center integrates vision, culture and training, by Patricia E. Moody, in Assn for Mfg Excellence Target magazine, Winter 2017.  

The answer to the question "What should I do with my life" doesn't usually strike like a lightning bolt, but most of the time in merely a small voice or faint urge. CLICK HERE FOR MORE.                                                                          

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Rick Blasgen, CSCMP head, talks with The Mill Girl about the next 50 years! Executive Interview HERE

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KAIZEN BLITZ PAYBACKS:

Set-up time reduction                                                         70 -90%

Productivity improvement                                                20-60%

Process time reduction                                                        40-80%

Inventory reduction                                                              30-70%

Walking distance reduction                                              40-90%

These results were compiled from more than fifty Kaizen Blitz companies, including Critikon (a Johnson and Johnson Company), Hamilton Standard, Jacobs Manufacturing, Pratt & Whitney, Wiremold, Microtouch, Nypro, Boston Scientific, US Robotics, and Rockwell Automation.  

 Source;  The Kaizen Blitz, Laraia, Moody and Hall, Wiley & Sons 1999

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Great news!  Dantar Oosterwal's The Lean Machine from Amacom awarded the Shingo prize for literature. Innovation and new product development at the heart of US manufacturing  future - so glad this milestone book wins Shingo.  Was not easy but enjoyed working on development and placement of this important project, seeing it through to completion! 

Reviews:

"...gives business leaders insight on supporting innovation and shows them how their companies can consistently excel at developing innovative and profitable products and still keep employees motivated, energized and always learning."  Biztimes Milwaukee

"The Lean Machine serves best as a set of tips for the project manager, but executives can also benefit from Oosterwal's wisdom when they are trying to build a top-performing team of product developers or engineers."  Houston Business Journal

"The author uses a friendly, conversational approach...The lessons provided are universal and helpful for any company needing a resurgence."  APICS Magazine

"...valuable insights for people interested in understanding how systematic problem solving applies to the kinds of problems that product development managers need to solve..."  Journal of Product Innovation Management

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                    MADE IN THE US - AND 75% OF THIS ELECTRONICS        COMPANY OUTPUT SHIPS TO THE FAR EAST!!! FAR OUT!!!

Firstronic wins Industry Week Best Plants Award.  Congrats again to this BLUE HERON JOURNAL "MADE IN THE AMERICAS" company.  Plus Firstronic sweeps Circuits Assembly magazine service excellence award.

Firstronic CEO John Sammut explains his strategy for building an electronics company that manufactures in the U.S. -- near ailing Detroit, no less! -- and exports to Korea, China, Mexico and India. 

Photo courtesy of Grand Rapids Business Journal

Patricia E. Moody's Blue Heron Journal features in Industry Week and AME's Target magazine:

Part 1:  Who says You Can't Manufacture Electronics in the US?- http://www.industryweek.com/growth-strategies/who-says-you-cant-manufacture-electronics-us

Part 2: Workforce, How Firstronic Grows Its Ownhttp://www.industryweek.com/leadership/workforce-and-lean-strategies-help-keep-manufacturer-us

Part 3: Leveraging IT for Competitive US Production

Tackling Workforce Challenges, A Made-In-The-Americas feature, Target Fall issue, available on-line 9/29/16 - CLICK HERE. (Non-AME members may need to sign up for free account.)   

The answer isn't always bring on the robots - three things Firstronic tackled that improved performance, including cutting turnover from 30% down to 5%. 

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The Hardest Part of Outsourcing Is Reversing It;

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What I Learned From Taking the Pre-hiring Survey - It's All in The Wiring;

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Workforce and Lean Strategies Help Keep Manufacturer in the US;

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What's red, stands 6-foot-3 when on a pedestal, has two arms and a big smile, and can work 24/7 without ever taking breaks for coffee or the bathroom?  Baxter, the collaborative robot, of course.  

Industry Week two-part feature series - collaborative kinesthetically programmed (in 15 minutes!) robots lead the Fifth Industrial Revolution.  Up in Minnesota, Donnelly Custom Manufacturing opened the door for new tasks for its human employees by bringing in collaborative robots.  To meet Baxter, the smiling robot and his fellow workers at Donnelly Custom Manufacturing in Minnesota,  CLICK HERE.    

Intelligent Automation, Collaborative Robots Can Solve a Big Challenge

When companies bring products back from offshored manufacturing operations, the processes cannot be simply dropped back into place and reconfigured with the same machines and process flows from 20 years back.  Robots offer the tremendous competitive advantage.  CLICK HERE.

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                           AND

AME TARGET FEATURE:  How Auto Supplier Magneti Marelli tackled this big packaging cost challenge: 

MORE MADE IN THE AMERICAS STORIES - from INDUSTRY WEEK:

SOUTH CAROLINA'S GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY SPEAKS ABOUT ABOUT THEIR PRO-BUSINESS APPROACH...

Governor Nikki Haley and Continental Executive Board Member Nikolai Setzler tour the Continental Tire Plant

South Carolina has been on a roll, attracting and retaining manufacturing companies, including BMW, Continental Tire and Kent International, Inc., among others.

We spoke with the state's Governor, Nikki Haley, about what role government plays in making it all work.  And with unemployment down to 6.7% from a previous high of 15%, they must be doing something right... MORE

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KENT INTERATIONAL'S RESHORING JOURNEY - They're bringing bike manufacturing back to the US!

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    "Nobody ever outsourced anything for quality. Since 1978,   still  Made in VERMONT, USA."

                     -- Quote on the wall of the Darn Tough factory.

How an American Sock Manufacturer Battled Its Way Back from Bankruptcy to Growth

Mar 9, 2015

il Patricia Moody

Publisher, Blue Heron Journal

When the last giant textile mills along the Merrimac River in New England shut down, hosiery was not far behind. The death of brick factories with names like Appleton, Lawrence, Coolidge and Cabot -– remember that name, Cabot -- marked the end of a one-hundred-fifty-year run of seemingly limitless U.S. innovation and profit dominance.

The human cost of lost livelihoods and hollowed-out towns was a pain suffered in city after city as first labor, wage and speed-up conflicts, followed by outsourcing, gouged big holes in the U.S.’ industrial fabric -- and forever changed the formula for success.

Earlier, the 1814 Boston Manufacturing Company’s prototype Waltham, Mass., mill, engineered by Frances Cabot Lowell and Paul Moody, succeeded on the strength of scale -– deeper waterfalls, more Yankee mill girls, then more workers from Ireland and Europe, more machines, bigger factories and, finally, complete process integration. The stockholders at the time were ecstatic as they, like the mill owners, saw cash endlessly pouring off rows of looms.

Small and, later, big brick mills provided local work for small towns and enormous profits for stockholders, but like so many other victims of outsourcing, hosiery manufacturing in the U.S. couldn’t keep up.

Like the textile mills before them, more and faster machines, economies of scale, fewer workers and home-grown innovation were just not enough to stem the outflow of this U.S. high-volume, low-margin business to cheap labor areas, first to the American South, then the Far East.

Like so many other U.S. manufacturers, Vermont’s Cabot Mills fell victim to the outsourcing craze.

Enter Ric Cabot, an ex-Manhattan publishing and advertising worker and a third-generation inheritor of what was -– at least at first -– a unique opportunity. This seemingly unlikely entrepreneur took over an operation that was busy shipping private-label socks to big-name retailers like J Crew, GAP, Banana Republic and Old Navy from an ancient mill in Northfield, Vt.

Most of all, the name 'Darn Tough' came to signify not just the socks themselves – guaranteed for life, knitted with small gauge, smoothly fitted New Zealand merino – but the company’s come-back strategy.

Ric’s grandfather had owned hosiery factories in New Hampshire and North Carolina and, in 1978, his father Marc acquired the Northfield site and switched from textile sales to running a mill.

“Dad decided on the Vermont location -– he had contacts here," Ric Cabot explained. "It was an industry in decline, but there was still manufacturing."

"We had 20,000 square feet in the old mill in town. We had the old fashioned belt-driven knitting machines, and we were beginning the changeover to computer-controlled machines, but the old mill burned down. In 1995, we completed this current 20,000 square foot factory, enlarged it to 56,000 square feet, and now we’re expanding it  again."

The business prospered. In 1989, when Ric had joined his dad at the mill, the “great quality at the right price” formula worked -- that is until, like textiles before them, high-volume U.S. hosiery manufacturers could no longer guarantee endless profits, especially for a small, first-tier supplier like Cabot Mills.

For ten years the Cabots had watched their business grow, until “it” -– outsourcing and extreme price competition –- happened. One by one, they lost their private-label customers. The results were predictably catastrophic for Cabot as the company defaulted on loans and sank deep into debt -– millions of dollars worth --  to Chittenden Bank.

Ric remembers that whole fearful period with great pain. In 2004, the bankers appeared for a meeting. “Anyone you owe money to doesn’t want the debtor to go bankrupt. That day the bankers backed out the door at the end of the meeting," Cabot recalled. "Instead of turning and leaving, they looked back at us and said ‘No surprises.’ If they had just walked straight out, that morning wouldn’t have been seared on my memory."

READ MORE:   From high-volume to niche products »

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AME Target On-line Feature:

The hardest part of outsourcing is reversing it

Patricia E. Moody

You can feel the momentum as automotive assembly plant suppliers, for example, talk about increased demand and new plants in the United States’ new South and Mexico. The pressure to perform is higher than it has ever been. Whether cheap money or heightened interest in reshoring and rebuilding American manufacturing capabilities are the cause, everyone — CEOs, investors, politicos, consultants and, most especially, producers themselves — senses opportunities and great challenges here.

Manufacturing, being a maker, is suddenly popular...The hardest part of outsourcing is reversing it

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Industry Week:  

 7 Thought Leaders Share Their Predictions

It was the year 2000, and we three manufacturing geeks -- we called ourselves the "White Socks Guys" -- were the skunks at the garden party, an Aspen futurist gathering of experts drawn from politics, the media and technology assembled to talk about trends and, in particular, the U.S.’s New Economy.

Madeleine Albright was there, and Bill Clinton flew in to deliver a high-ticket speech. The hot topic was globalization... We were outnumbered.

Click Industry WeekHERE for Predictions from Microsoft's Mike Opal, packaging guru Kevin Howard, MIT's Simchi-Levi, SAP CEO McDermott, Baxter the Robot and his Humanoid Jim Lawton, analytics guru David Armstrong, and Cloud expert Thomas Trappler

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Paging Dr. Lean for Solutions

DESIGNING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

According to packaging guru Professor Diana Twede at Michigan State, packaging engineer Kevin Howard earned a bucket of gold stars when in a breakthrough creativity moment he dreamed up a new way for HP to ship Deskjet printers — pallet-less.  Not only did his concept reduce the weight, and therefore shipping costs for HP and its customers, but it took logistics and packaging on a whole new path toward “self-packing” designs.  MORE DESIGNING FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

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Paging Dr. Lean to...

Seattle Children’s Hospital

Seattle Children’s Hospital used classic supply management, Japanese shop floor methods and 4P to save money, free up clinicians for more bedside care and build its new, smaller facility. That’s right, they got better and smaller!

Greg Beach, senior director of supply chain at Seattle Children’s Hospital, is one of those rare health care transformation executives whose best friends are doctors and nurses and whose culture change work hasn’t gotten him fired....MORESeattle Children's

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INDUSTRY WEEK FEATURE:  

The Quest to Simplify Manufacturing IT

Winners Dream, by Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP

  When Bill McDermott’s little brother Kevin, 6 feet tall and 225 pounds, hefted the 6-foot, 2-inch, 165-pound Bill, outfitted in one of his two $99 suits, and carried him through 4 feet of flood water to their Dad, who was waiting to drive the future CEO to the train, it was all part of the promise, part of the dream.

“When did you first make this dream your goal?” I asked McDermott, now CEO of SAP, the world’s third largest software company. “It was on the train ride in,” he explained. “I wanted to be the next David Kearns (Xerox’ CEO 1982 to 1990).”

But it wasn’t just that train ride. McDermott, as you’ll learn in his book, Winners Dream, A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office, had prepped his whole life for that first big Xerox dream, and the next and the next... MORE

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The Mill Girl Returns to Briggs & Stratton Thirty Years After America's First JIT Pilot..

Industry Week  3-part series on the transformation of a century-old American icon:

When Stephen Foster Briggs and Harold Mead Stratton partnered to mass produce their first product, a two-cycle six cylinder auto engine in 1908, they launched a journey that took this American icon through generations of manufacturing in the heartland, heartbreak and hope, big technology, and workforce challenges, until, over one hundred years and several transformations later, a new company emerged.  CLICK:  http://www.industryweek.com/change-management/trnsformation-century-old-us-manufacturing-company

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Paging Dr. Lean: Do You Prefer the Purple or the Blue Gloves?

How Christie Clinic cut complexity and saved money without ticking off the docs

Jason Hirsbrunner: Just one more battle in the “this is the way we have been doing it” campaign.

I can think of two big health care institutions where the doctors fought the elimination of their favorite — but redundant — supplies, and in the battle for freedom of choice over dictated spend reduction, guess who won?  Do You Prefer The Purple or the Blue Gloves?

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THE ROBOTS SMASH RECORDS AND COLLIDE WITH WETWARE - Hey, why not bring in the robots, sit back and let the machines do all the work?

The numbers are in, and they are shocking — 14,135 robots valued at $788 million, or $55,000 per robot, were ordered from North American robot producers in the first half of 2014, an increase in sales that smashed the previous record and raises new questions for manufacturers.

Money is cheap and companies are sitting on a lot of it. So why not bring in the robots, sit back and let the machines do all the work?  Dick Morley, serial entrepreneur and creator of the programmable logic controller (PLC) said.. MORE

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"Let the data lead you..."

 Shewhart Award winner and Rath and Strong guru Dorian Shainin pounded it into us.... and that's the way we like to look at how well companies are running their operations.  We love these numbers!  Net profit tells us so much about systems, leadership, strategies and managing costs, especially purchasing spend.  With the exception of GM and Ford, each company showed Gross Profit Margins of approximately 20%, so the differences in Net Profit Margins say much about efficiencies and systems.  "Let the data lead you..."

                        Dec. 2013          March 2014   June 2014 Sept 2014  Dec 2015

Honda            5.32%                5.51                  4.90                4.71          3.43

Toyota            7.98                    4.52                 9.20                8.22         8.56

Nissan            3.75                    4.1                    6.25                 4.89         4.23

Volkswagen   4.58                     5.01                4.72                  6.87     (3.36) Sept 

Ford                 8.21                     2.76                3.50                 2.39         6.60

GM                   2.57                      0.57                 .70                  3.75       15.81

Tesla                                                                                             (8.77)     (26.4)

BMW                                                                                                              7.04

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Paging Dr. Lean for Solutions

Posted by Patricia Moody on Tuesday, 03 June 2014 in Guest Posts

14

inShar

Editor's Note: On May 1st, Buyers Meeting Point issued an Open Call for predictions about the future of procurement as part of the #FutureBuy project I am working on with Jon Hansen (Procurement Insights, PI Window on the World). We welcome all predictions, either as comments to our posts on the subject, guest submissions, or posts on Twitter flagged with our #FutureBuy hashtag.  Kelly Barner, Buyers Meeting Point

The New Monroe Doctrine:  The US and Mexico reach a new geopolitical arrangement, beyond Nafta, beyond immigration, that leverages the resources of Mexico - workforce, manufacturing centers, oil, and in combination with Canada's oil, redefines and strengthens  The Americas' global trade powerhouse.  Other American countries follow.  ... FOR MORE FUTURE FLASHES CLICK ON GUEST POSTS ABOVE

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Paging Dr. Lean for Healthcare Solutions

Christie Clinic CEO Alan Gleghorn spoke with Blue Heron Journal about what he views as the three biggest health care challenges... "My grandfather, Henry Gleghorn, was passionate about fruit trees," he said. "Grandpa lived in Seymour, TX, not the best place to grow fruit." But Gleghorn thought about his Grandpa and how he planted and cared for his orchard, and when the younger Gleghorn was faced with instituting continuous improvement and culture change at Christie Clinic, he remembered what Grandpa said...CLICK  Show Me Your Orchard

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 Honorary Doctorate Commencement Address

A Mother's Day Remembrance, and a message for the  graduating class...it's that time of year again... milestones 

And thank you to some other people whom you will never meet:

Japanese flowering quince in

full bloom on Mother's Day,

 grown from a shoot cut from

 her plant, some 30+ yrs 

after her passing at age 55

 from a very rare and very 

fatal cancer, reticular cell

 sarcoma.  I was 24.   

First of all to my mother.  Thank you Mumma.   My mother had an 8th grade education.  She worked in a shoe shop for 7 years until she married – she picked up a heel, brushed cement on it, and tapped it in place. Pick up a heel, slather on some cement and tap in in place.  Pick up a heel….for 7 years.    She knew education was going to be important for me.  She didn’t understand the how or the specifics, but she knew it was for survival.

 You see, I have a hard time learning new things...  I always fail in my first attempt – my first pass at Dick and Jane, my first driver’s test, my first accounting exam, my first typing test, my first marriage, my first attempt to learn tennis, my first book – it’s a long list, and we only have 15 minutes. MORE

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Mark Steele foresees parity of labor costs signaling increased competitiveness for the U.S. He is a private equity veteran and specialist in “Reputational RebuildsSM,” and is the CEO of Skyware Global. He predicts that reshoring and near-shoring trends will ultimately drive improvements... CLICK Re-shoring/in-shoring New Challenges

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Paging Dr. Lean for Technology Tools

Isn’t there a better way?

OPTIMIZATION!

By Patricia E. Moody

We’re seeing an explosion of powerful technology tools, from dashboards, to Cloud services and real-time network algorithms.  But are they doable and do they make a difference?  The answer is yes to both questions, but for supply management and manufacturing, new tools, like optimization, require newer, better decisions.   

Quentin Samelson, Nokia supply management exec and Motorola veteran,  says that technology tools hold enormous opportunity for industry. In supply management, Samelson sees a second round of interest in optimization, this time as a tool that can bring real benefits.  MORE Technology Tools

AND SAMELSON'S ANSWER TO A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION FROM SUBHAJIT G. VIA LINKEDIN:

On 03/23/14 9:47 PM, Subhajit G. wrote:

--------------------

Hi Patricia....will you please help me getting this answer??

how to estimate the cost for implementing optimization tools in an organization in different links of supply chain. Is the cost for any department is dependent on the cost of implementing in other department

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Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To MeFour tech leaders predict the future of high-tech manufacturing, innovation and the road back to success

... all across the manufacturing  landscape, people feel they have "been down so long it looks like up to me" – shell-shocked by off-shoring, down-sizing and bad government moves, their eyes clouded over and they lost their vision.

And that's a shame, because they are missing the good news all around them: low inflation, cheap money, even cheaper technology, a steady stream of tech and machine innovation, U.S. companies taking back manufacturing and exporting a bigger share of product, an oil boom right here in the Americas.

It's enough to make a Mill Girl jump up at her machine and cheer. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

CLICK HERE FOR THIS MILL GIRL FEATURE IN INDUSTRY WEEK

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So you're thinking of writing a book.... Great idea!  But....

Ten Tacky Signs that your book was self-published from The Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal  more

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Healthcare Predictions for 2014 - It’s been a long year, and we’ve all had enough pain to last us through “The Next Healthcare Revolution.” But at 17 percent of the U.S. GDP, one third of which is administrative costs, it gets personal — real personal. Even as the principles of lean manufacturing are applied to healthcare throughput, paperwork and facility design, progress has been too slow... there is truly much good data out there..we could use a little vision, some wisdom and some wild and crazy prognostications to comfort us.

First, good news for those of us who need organs and joints refreshed, just in time...Andy Coutu, President of R & D Technologies Inc., said that the next three to five years will see producers perfect their 3D Additive Manufacturing skills... “Within the next three to five years, the industry predicts the percentage will increase to 27 percent. Companies such as Stratasys will hit the $1 billion mark, and the street predicts that 3D printing companies’ (Stratasys and 3D Systems) stock will remain on the buy list.” Good news for healthcare, where hopeful rumblings about replacement organs and joints have the market’s attention. “It will be awhile before the FDA approves these printed body parts, but right now they are jetting out human tissue through 3D printers. With stem cell, fatty tissue and DNA, who knows where this will go?” CLICK HERE FOR MORE Healthcare Predictions for 2014

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Wow, two years later, 2016,  I have to say it wasn't over but at least I'm walking.  I'll explain later...

2014, THE FIRST DAY, IT'S GOING TO BE A BETTER YEAR, A GOOD YEAR... fried egg with ham and a little cheddar on raisin bagel with latte, and Jimi Hendrix "Let me stand next to your fire."  It was a longggg year and it's over... it's over.  Made all my deadlines, did the RailTrail (no cars) on hybrid, almost never walk like a penguin, doctor died, got a trainer and PT coach, December saw NY Polyphony, my goal since last Christmas,  with my family in a snowstorm at Columbia with new titanium-tipped walking stick- DON'T YOU JUST LOVE THAT TITANIUM!   A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal

AND YET ANOTHER MILESTONE!  One year after The Unfortunate Incident with the Stairs, beyond daily PT and fitness classes, CrankyBitch is sending out a big thank you to all who forwarded Positivityness Messages - beautiful photos, videos, cards, flowers, Godiva chocolates, music, a Jambox,  one pair of new boots, prayers - every bit helped.  Never depressed, just felt I was at the bottom of a deep well, challenged to relearn how to walk.  And now happily working on re-programming those neural pathways so that when my head says "pivot and step," my foot doesn't go "duh..."  

Psalm 17:5  My steps have held fast to thy paths, My feet have not slipped. 

Sign me Crazy Lucky.  

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CLICK HERE FOR INDUSTRY WEEK

Commentary from The Mill Girl

Microsoft Cloud Visionary Mike Opal asks

"Are you The Perfect Pumpkin?" As big data proliferates, manufacturers find themselves competing in a vast, expanding field of options. Companies that fail to establish what makes them special and build their businesses around it will be left behind. 

Where are you on Cloud Analytics and The Connected Enterprise?More devices breed more data, which breeds more actionable business intelligence.  For the full interview: Executive Interview: The Future According to Microsoft Cloud Visionary Mike Opal 

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DRILL BITS!  3D ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING, says Enterprise Tech on-line, will reach $6B by 2017:

"According to additive manufacturing authority Terry Wohlers, efforts such as these are playing into a boom from the industry’s current value at $2.2 billion to $6 billion by 2017. For many companies, additive manufacturing is used primarily for rapid prototyping, but increasingly manufacturers of all sizes are using it to offer customized designs at a low cost to the consumer.

'We are indeed experiencing a very dramatic paradigm shift in manufacturing worldwide,' said BlueFire Chairman and CEO William A. Blackwell."

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Healing Health Care

Jay Fulkerson, president and CEO of Health Payment Systems and a UnitedHealthcare veteran, is a health care pioneer doing some very cool things in claims administration

technology. The Mill Girl spoke with Fulkerson about what the company is doing to solve the big, messy billing problem that dominates health care. For providers, employers and consumers alike, the current claims process is confusing, burdensome and intimidating.  

 CLICK HEREExecutive Interview with Jay Fulkerson

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Solidscape - Made in The Americas Innovation, One Layer, One Industry at a Time

When Royden Sanders’ professors at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute concluded that their student’s thesis was “too complicated,” like other later dropouts — Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Ted Turner, Mark Zuckerberg — Sanders walked. And he went on to create even bigger and more complicated devices and operations...  CLICK HERE:Solidscape: Celebrating a Legacy of Innovation One Layer, One Industry at a Time

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PAGING DR. LEAN..... PAGING DR. LEAN(sm)

The Mill Girl asks lean experts to answer your questions. This forum allows industry leaders to speak to the lean issues or questions you come across each day.  Send your questions for Dr. Lean to  tricia@patriciaemoody.com.

Paging Dr. Lean to Cut Healthcare Costs,  Executive Interview with Cardinal Health VP Bill Owad

The Mill Girl: What is the biggest opportunity that you now see in health care to simplify and reduce costs?Owad: ...coordinating care from end to end...  opportunities in six big buckets... Healing HealthcareMORE

Note:  In Nov. 2012, Gartner named Cardinal Health number one in supply chain, with Mayo Clinic coming in second: - .

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Paging Dr. Lean for New Product Development

Dear Dr. Lean:

My company participates in a new product development consortium to exchange ideas and work through better new product approaches. .... What we don't know is if we can change the gates in the health care value stream to speed up the whole cycle. In the end, all the customer really cares about is getting his equipment tomorrow.

What should we do?  Where should we start?

Sincerely,

An Innovator

DR. LEAN'S PRESCRIPTION:  PAGING DR. LEAN...NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Paging Dr. Lean for Logistics Savings

Dear Dr. Lean:

My back hurts and my arms are numb. I work as a logistics supervisor in an old-school operation. We do a lot of expedites, premium shipments, workarounds, and heavy lifting ... I just don't think we can go much longer doing it this way.  Paging Dr. Lean for Logistics SavingsMORE 

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Paging Dr. Lean for Cost Measurement Solutions

Dear Dr. Lean:

We are trying to be more rigorous about measuring costs, but we have disagreements about the numbers —  We need help on these three questions... THREE COST EXPERTS RESPOND TO "TOO MANY NUMBERS IN CHICAGO"...MORE

Paging Dr. Lean Healthcare Solutions from from Healthcare Reform Pioneers Dr. John Toussaint and Cindy Jimmerson

Dr. Lean - Why is it that when I go to the doctor I feel like a car going down an assembly line?... MORE

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When Jim Womack told me in 1997 that he was thinking of tackling the healthcare system because he had seen unfortunate events happen to his father-in-law, I told him “It’s a swamp, you’ll sink.”  ...  17% of our GNP, of which fully 1/3 represents administrative costs -  we might ask, “Why NOT healthcare?”...MORE 

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Healing Healthcare, Cindy Jimmerson Interview

  Cindy Jimmerson, lean healthcare pioneer and former nurse - she's got street cred -  lives in a canyon along the Big Blackfoot River, the setting for the film A River Runs Through It, .. got her start in Lean doing research for the National Science Foundation “Innovation in Industry.” ...MORE

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