Life Coach

So I know jack about manufacturing and production lines real world, but spend my spare time studying lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management and all related things to increase Cust Sat, reducing held inventory, and smoothing a order to deliver pipeline.

If you're not all over this kind of thing, this is the area I'd be reading about/into and talking to them about. Lean/Six Sigma/TQM, Flow

Seul

@Maynard:

… or more simply, "I'm a bit of an arse".

Honesty's always appreciated!..

Snowy

Goldratt's The Goal is a bit of a bible, bits from Six Sigma text that relate to measuring the floor correctly;

Throughput T is defined as the rate at which a system generates money through sales (Goldratt, 1990, p. 19). Another way to think about it is as the marginal contribution of sales to profit. Throughput can be assessed for the entire company over some period of time, or it can be broken out by product line, or even by individual unit of product sold. Mathematically, throughput equates to sales revenue (SR) minus variable cost (VC). T = SR

For daily management decisions, which we’d like to be able to relate to the system’s goal, T, I, and OE are much more useful than the traditional organizational success measures of net profit (NP), return on investment (ROI), and cash flow (CF). Yet there has to be a connection between the two types of financial measures. And here it is: NP = T – OE ROI = (T – OE)/I CF = T – OE ± AI

Pyzdek, Thomas; Keller, Paul (2014-05-29). Six Sigma Handbook, Fourth Edition (ENHANCED EBOOK) (Kindle Locations 3269-3273). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.

Snowy

http://flowcon.org/dl/flowcon-sanfran-2014/slides/DonReinertsen_TheLogicOfFlowSomeIndispensableConcepts.pdf

Is a great slide deck on optimise manufacturing flow.

Snowy

And PS take it easy and good luck! Keep formal, but try sus their interests out as people. Do you like them, that's most important! I've always tried to meet the team I'll be managing, easier if you have some indication, even if just a wave hello.

urbanwoodsman

@Giles:

wtf

Hahaha.

Megatron1505

Coming from a military/ aerospace background, tools like six sigma, lean and 5S are drilled into us, along with shit like kaizen and fishbone/ Pareto analysis. Trust me that 99% of it is bullshit in real time, small batch manufacturing, it only works if you make billions of exactly the same thing.

Might buy the second shirt for pleasure wear

Snowy

Sounds like you're ready :). I would expect least some causal questions on inventory management (or would be asking some!), so good you've got your answers heavily ready :).

(I've found it very handy in IT for repeatable processes; the batch is always the same size, doing the same thing, Agile releases make a world of difference. As I said, I know jack about manufacturing, however, I would now like a soda water/beer with you even more now!)

Maynard Friedman

This is why it's important to:
A) Get an interesting, creative job so you don't have to bother with all that lean, six sigma stuff (or have to pretend you're interested) OR
Become senior enough that you can delegate it all to someone else

Snowy

@Maynard:

This is why it's important to:
A) Get an interesting to bother with all that lean, six sigma stuff
Become senior enough that you can delegate it all to someone else

Pretty much where I'm at getting to. I love it! (Combo of the A&B)

jdl1279

As someone who has a manufacturing job, and deals with several production tracking systems on a daily. I'm left wondering what twisted mind would study these for leisure? The knowledge acquired for my day job is far more exciting and we're talking about insurance regulations there. You have to have a peculiar sense of entertainment Snowy. lol

bubbapest

@mclaincausey:

I disagree with bubbapest, they'll think you're lazy if you ask about workload at an informal chat IMO. I think chris nailed it. I always ask the interviewer questions. Like how long they've been there, for example. If they've been there a while, it speaks well for the business, and I tell them so.

they're asking him in. he holds all the cards. take care of megatron first. he's already got a job. as long as he knows his stuff (seems like he does), and doesn't offend anyone, he's got a supreme upper hand. if work life balance is important and they will work him 100 hours a week, why waste time?

just because its informal doesnt mean its not an interview… what is your work life balance is 100% valid question to ask at any stage.

Iron Heart Fall/Winter 2025 Collection Preview - Now Live

Life Coach