Great Article about Lean

[mattf]

This article compared lean suppliers to China. Kind of daunting to most, but the analysis is quite good, I'm waiting to see if I can get my hands on the actual data to compare the results, but its an interesting article nonetheless.

Lean suppliers competitive with China

Found it from this blog:

Evolving Excellence

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

Anybody else heard that a lot of printers in China have shut down lately and that used equipment has in general stopped going there? An online print machinery auction company told me this yesterday.

[gordo]

From what I've seen, many printers in China have been buying brand new top of the line equipment rather than used. That being said, in some cases, cheap labor was used instead of equipment. For example, one factory employed a fellow with an electric sander to smooth out the edges of cut sheets of greeting cards as it was less expensive than buying a sharp, guillotine.
Interestingly, if memory serves, an article in Canadian Printer about two years reported on a test buy of printing books and found that Canadian book printer pricing was less expensive than procuring the books from China.

best gordo

[mattf]

While on the subject:

What blogs and websites do some of you that follow the lean forum get your "lean" news? I have two, not the greatest but they have some interesting articles:

Evolving Excellence

leanblog.org | Lean Blog | Lean Manufacturing | Lean Healthcare | Toyota Production System

Lean Printing

Learn Lean Manufacturing

Anyone else have any sites they follow?