Less firefighting.
More flow.
A 6-minute Sunday read for production supervisors, ops managers, and plant managers. One Lean or AI module per week. Written from real shop-floor decisions — not the lecture hall.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Monday 5am CT, 6-minute read.
One-page PDF · Floor-ready
Six minutes.
Four blocks.
Same shape every week. Easy to scan on the phone before the 7 AM shift brief, or with coffee on Sunday morning.
Three signals worth knowing.
Three numbers from the past week — Lean case studies, AI vision, ATC machines. Cited. Not vibes.
One operational habit.
A specific practice for production supervisors. Built to survive turnover, shift change, and disagreement.
One shop. One machine.
What actually changed on the floor. Numbers before. Numbers after. No theory.
One line, not a dashboard.
How AI shows up in this module without becoming overhead. Decision support, not data slop.
No content treadmill.
The next 30 weeks are planned.
A flat-rotation curriculum: Lean fundamentals, AI moves, supervisor habits. One module per week. No re-runs.
5S that holds when the supervisor leaves
ABC inventory: 700 → 125 SKUs
Andon for shops that hate dashboards
Bottleneck analysis: where time actually leaks
Cell manufacturing: layout that flows
Continuous flow without buffer drama
VSM in 90 minutes, not 9 days
Gemba walks that don't waste 4 hours
Heijunka for high-mix, low-volume
Hoshin Kanri: strategy that hits the floor
Ishikawa: fishbones that find the root
Jidoka: stop the line on purpose
JIT without the panic
Kaizen events that change something
Kanban: visual signals over MRP
Takt time vs cycle time, decoded
One-piece flow on a high-mix floor
Standard work for the 10-minute brief
The 8 wastes, ranked by what they cost
OEE under 60%: it's scheduling, not equipment
TPM scaled down for the SME shop
Poka-yoke: quality at source
PDCA loops that actually close
SMED on a CNC turret
Zero quality control: catch it at source
SMART goals for ops, not HR
Mind maps for shop-floor problem solving
KPIs that drive Friday decisions
Root cause analysis: 5 Whys done right
Visual factory: the floor that explains itself
Don’t take my word.
Read this week’s issue.
The current issue is published in full. If the format doesn’t fit how you actually work, the unsubscribe link is at the bottom and I won’t take it personally.
5S that holds when the supervisor leaves.
The day the brake supervisor left, the system disappeared with him. Here is the audit card that kept it from happening twice.
Read this week’s issue →From the floor.
Not the lecture hall.
Twenty-five years in sheet metal. Started as an operator. Worked up through press brakes, lasers, and ATC machines. Salvagnini, TRUMPF, Bystronic — the machines you actually run, not the ones in the brochure.
I wrote the audit card on a Sunday because we’d lost the same supervisor twice and the floor exposed itself both times. It’s a free PDF. The brief is too. The paid stuff comes later, only if any of this is useful Monday morning.
No certificates listed. No keynote photos. The brief earns trust by being useful — or it doesn’t.
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Plus the Press Brake 5S Audit Card on signup. Free, forever. Unsubscribe whenever the format stops earning the six minutes.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Monday 5am CT, 6-minute read.