My Favourite Tipples from an Engineering Specialist
Jinfo Blog

By Mark Burnard

Abstract

Mark Burnard manages a team of manufacturing engineers for a global designer and manufacturer of heavy vehicle axles and ancillary systems. He shares his favourite tipples.

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Mark Burnard manages a team of manufacturing engineers for a global designer and manufacturer of heavy vehicle axles and ancillary systems and provides us with a list of his favourite tipples, both those he uses in the course of day-to-day work as well as a personal favourite: John Seddon's Vanguard Method site, dedicated to Systems Thinking. In a professional context Mark chooses sites dedicated to Lean, process design and improvement, and novel manufacturing techniques.

Here are my favourite tipples that are currently helping me through.

• Machine Design: I often dip into this website to keep abreast of the latest ideas and techniques in manufacturing. Truly novel products or processes are often reported upon, which, even if they are not immediately applicable certainly provide interesting food for thought.
  
  
• Factory Physics: I was relatively late in discovering Factory Physics (the book was first published in 1996), but so glad that I did! I love the straightforward, principle-based approach. Much of the Lean literature is unfortunately very simplistic and derivative, advocating a "one-size fits all" approach to improvement. It's refreshing to find something which explains WHY these techniques work, and whether they are in fact applicable in one's own organisation.
  
  
• Lean Math: I spend a lot of time reflecting on how things can be done better, more efficiently, with less waste. Gaining an understanding of the underlying principles of cause and effect in processes is an essential starting point. I often dip into Lean Math for inspiration when planning an improvement project.
  
  
• Vanguard: John Seddon can be relied upon for an individual, down-to-earth and thought provoking insight into the theory and practice of “Lean Thinking”, particularly in service organisations. Always interesting, sometimes challenging – highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Systems Thinking, Lean or the Toyota Production System.

An article in FreePint which I found particularly interesting:

• 2014 - Reasons to be Cheerful? This is a particularly interesting short article. One insight which particularly resonated with me was that organisations frequently consider that data has value simply because it resides "in the system".
  
  Many of our strategic decisions are based on costing (where in the world to manufacture products), and I am more than ever convinced that the only way to do this properly is to go to the factory floor, see and touch the inputs and outputs and only then conduct the analysis. I've seen many poor business decisions made through a naïve trust in "the system" and very few practitioners with the ability to extract real insight from MRP/ERP data!

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