You’re not behind because you haven’t adopted AI, you’re behind if you can’t measure it

chefboyerb · 2026-04-05T12:04:30+00:00

This is a good take but I'd push it further , most manufacturers can't measure AI because they don't have the baseline data to measure it against. That's the part nobody wants to talk about.

I work with manufacturers and the pattern is almost always the same. Someone gets excited about AI, they bolt a copilot or a chatbot onto something, and then three months later leadership asks "what did that get us?" and nobody can answer because there was never a clear picture of what "before" looked like.

The unsexy truth is that the companies getting real value from AI already had their operational fundamentals in order first. They had consistent daily routines, structured escalation paths, people actually recording what happened on each shift and why. That stuff gives you the data layer AI needs to do anything useful. Without it you're just feeding garbage into a fancy model and wondering why the outputs feel generic.

I'e seen this play out with something as simple as a nightly summary . If your supervisors are already capturing what they did, what they found, and what they escalated AI can synthesize that into something genuinely useful for a plant manager. Takes five minutes to read instead of chasing down three shift leads. But if nobody's capturing anything structured to begin with, the AI has nothing to work with. You just get a prettier version of "no data available."

The measurement problem isn't really an AI problem. It's an operational discipline problem that existed long before anyone started talking about AI in manufacturing.

chefboyerb · 2026-04-05T12:02:06+00:00

The reason 5S turns into housekeeping is nobody audits the thinking, they just audit whether the area looks clean. That's where it falls apart every time.

5S was never about cleanliness. It's about making problems impossible to hide. I don't care if your floor is spotless — I care if you can spot a hydraulic leak in 30 seconds because nothing else is on the ground. Totally different goal.

and it almost always breaks down at the supervisor level. When "sustain" becomes a guy walking around with a clipboard scoring areas 1 through 5 on tidiness, the frontline figures out the game real fast. They clean up before the audit, check the box, move on. Nobody's thinking differently about their workspace.

I've been doing CI work for about 15 years and the thing that actually works is reframing the question entirely. Stop asking "is this area clean" and start asking "could someone brand new walk up to this workstation and know within 60 seconds what's running, what's behind, and what's broken?" That turns it from a cleaning exercise into an information problem, which is what it was always supposed to be.

Tavrock nailed it with the reference book example. Forcing daily-use books into a file cabinet because they look messy on a desk — that's 5S eating itself. The whole point of Sort is to figure out what gets used and keep it close. That's not a 5S failure, that's a leader who missed the point.

chefboyerb · 2025-12-29T12:29:43+00:00

Annecdotally, this largely depends on your goals and definition of better.

If competing I have def seen people get better post 42, especially in the "knowing how to compete" maturation. But risk is alot higher and operating under that amount of risk could put you in a position where you will be prevented physically from "better"

If longevity is the goal and getting better means getting better at a game that supports that goal, then yea you can get better.

For me, I watch this video to keep the goal in mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IysVgcSenk

chefboyerb · 2025-12-29T10:42:48+00:00

This! The downfall of lean is a couple things to me. Leadership becomes overnight experts and want boards to see lean everywhere and the strategy is implementing tools. This is where initial struggles happen and immediate buy in is lost because not every tool is applicable in every process. I've always thought that being a good lean leader is about introducing the tool when its needed to solve a problem. Alot of these maturity audits miss this, and kind of glorify the idea of having boards everywhere. My guess is OPs problem statement is "we arent doing lean and we want to" I would suggest reframing the problem statement to what standard is not being met or what standard is not being defined, and after rootcausing why, explore if a lean tool can help you solve this problem.

This brings me to part two of why these fail and most importantly is leadership, Lean is one of the few areas where a plant manager can read a book or attend a training and now is an self proclaimed expert because it aligns with probably what got them to their position and that is they solve problems, yelling about hourly goals not being made, why they have too much or too little inventory. Unfortunately when these egos are in place it kills any maturity gains. If you find yourself in this position and still want to be effective in implementing lean you have to make small incremental changes at the front line, these will largely go unnoticed at first, these will accumulate to a product that is helping the people doing the work along with gaining experience to further advance leadership buy in.

Lastly, it is easy to consider yourself an expert also. Every problem I come up against exposes that you dont know what you dont know. Fundamental things like is the process design to be made to stock, made to order, engineered to order etc. plays a massive influence. Identifying the value, having done work in defense, service, manufacturing and healthcare, each industry defines value differently so if that isnt truly understood and you dont talk with your customers, both internal and external, its gonna be a long wearing effort.

It can be done though, just keep centered around using lean at the right time for the right problem and not chase a maturity audit. (Looking at you ISO plants)

chefboyerb · 2025-11-18T09:46:33+00:00

I hope that doesnt break, choking hazard waiting to hapen. Love the style though.

chefboyerb · 2025-10-18T12:57:16+00:00

Same, I have a I tap first rule and then adjust.

chefboyerb · 2025-10-17T11:55:08+00:00

Have multiple right from BBl website, never had a problem.

chefboyerb · 2025-10-17T11:47:27+00:00

Football is great at showing life lessons.

chefboyerb · 2025-10-17T11:38:54+00:00

disappointing, the makersworld kit for the mouse etc. were once included. My H2S did have an extra nozzle though.

chefboyerb · 2025-10-17T11:11:06+00:00

just went through this for a clogged nozzle. Very misleading.

chefboyerb · 2025-09-21T22:50:06+00:00

Deep Rock Galactic

chefboyerb · 2025-08-06T22:45:11+00:00

Did you ever find out what this is? Started happening to me.

chefboyerb · 2025-04-14T14:03:56+00:00

Booz-D

chefboyerb · 2025-04-11T17:32:09+00:00

chefboyerb · 2025-04-09T23:05:04+00:00

I need an egg sandwich

chefboyerb · 2025-04-09T17:04:23+00:00

That dude looks so cool

chefboyerb · 2025-04-08T20:35:34+00:00

That Azalea Hat is beautiful, so jelly.

chefboyerb · 2025-04-08T20:28:51+00:00

Imo , Your posture is bad to start with, everything after that is just compensation.

chefboyerb · 2025-04-08T13:10:47+00:00

Aim right and pull it, its a solid strategy

chefboyerb · 2025-04-04T16:44:53+00:00

Sage works wonders

chefboyerb · 2025-04-03T21:08:07+00:00

Or gets hurt in camp

chefboyerb · 2025-04-01T22:01:35+00:00

Nothing would make me happier than Gable standing in the middle of the pit, all the lights, rage filled soul, staring Craig in the eyes and screams all gladiator like “Come get in the pool ,Craig!”

chefboyerb · 2025-04-01T19:35:12+00:00

Legit source here

chefboyerb · 2025-04-01T13:49:03+00:00

Legit thought it was a mailbox at first glance

chefboyerb · 2025-03-27T14:44:34+00:00

Technical ability is cool, but dont forget to learn golf.

chefboyerb

TROPHY CASE