The Richwood Report

If you haven't been there, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with information on practically anything you might be curious about. The idea is the sort of thing that makes the internet the wonder that it is: if you want to write or edit one of the articles, you can. So can anyone else. The articles are a collaboration between all the people who want to write on a subject. Because they are written this way, you probably don't want to use it as a sole source for information on a subject, but it's certainly an interesting place to start learning about something. For example, the article on Huntington, WV, the home of Richwood Inc. is full of helpful information and I couldn't recommend a better summary of what the community has to offer. The article on lean manufacturing is actually pretty good too! You should go take a look, but here's a sample, the summary statement of the principles of lean:

Both Lean and TPS can be seen as a loosely connected set of potentially competing principles whose goal is cost reduction by the elimination of waste. These principles include:

• Pull processing: products are pulled from the consumer end (demand) just-in-time to be used, not pushed from the production end (Supply)
• Perfect first-time quality - quest for zero defects, revealing & solving problems at the source
• Waste minimization – eliminating all activities that do not add value & or are safety nets, maximize use of scarce resources (capital, people and land)
• Continuous improvement – reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity and information sharing
• Flexibility – producing different mixes or greater diversity of products quickly, without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production
• Building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers through collaborative risk sharing, cost sharing and information sharing arrangements
• Autonomation - if an abnormal situation arises then a machine or person must stop production in order to avoid defective products and other waste
• Load levelling and Production flow - fluctuations in product flow increase waste because process capacity must always be prepared for peak production
• Visual control - where the actual progress of work in comparison to daily production plans is clearly visible.

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Not bad!