You may have heard of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Design – how about Lean Living? The same principles from the factory floor can be applied right in you very own home. Whether it’s the laundry, taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, or handling the mail, you can improve the efficiency of your household by applying Lean principles as if your home were a factory.
Let’s study the laundry process as an example. First, dirty clothes are removed and stored in a buffer (hamper, floor, bedpost, closet). Then, dirty clothes are sorted (usually) into lights and darks or whites and colors. These sorted piles act as buffers but are eventually transferred to the laundry station and washing and drying. These clothes are sometimes stored in the washing machine or dryer for extended periods of time so these are also used as another buffer or storage location for ‘inventory’. The clothes then folded at the dryer before being transferred back to another holding station in the form of a closet or dresser. Sometimes, the clothes are transferred to a separate folding station in front of the TV or to a bed if there is a lot of folding required. From the start of this process to the end, the clothes have been stored in up to 4 different buffers (closet, hamper, dryer, folding station) and handled as many times.
To improve the efficiency in the laundry process, there are several improvements that can be made.
- Eliminate the sorting process by having separate hampers for lights and darks.
- If you do an all-in-one laundry load, use your washer as a hamper and eliminate that storage step completely. Place dirty laundry directly into the washing machine.
- Fold clothes directly from the dryer and transfer immediately to closets or dressers
- For maximum efficiency, wear clothes directly from the dryer and eliminate the folding and storage steps entirely.
Many of the above principles can also be applied to dish washing. Instead of using the cupboard, sink, drying rack, and dishwasher as potential storage and subsequent handling/transferring locations, simple eliminate all of the above for your most frequently used items. When you need a dish, take it from the dishwasher. When you are finished with a dish, place it back in the dishwasher. This eliminates the extra process steps of placing dirty dishes in the sink, for later later transfer to the dishwasher and back to a cupboard.
By now, you’re probably imagining many other applications for Lean Living around your home. Just a few include:
Garbage – eliminate as many waste baskets as you can in the home. The more waste baskets, the more garage you will generate and the more time you will spend sorting and getting rid of it.
Mail – open it and action it immediately to avoid generating mail storage piles that will later need to be sorted and filed. In general, try to touch mail only once. The more times you have to handle a piece of mail, the less efficient your home will be. If you get a bill in the mail, you should open it, pay it, and file it immediately. Otherwise, you may put it in a pile, forget about it, find it later, wonder if it’s paid, pay it late, put it back in a pile, and finally sort it and file it.
Some think that Lean Living is just a sophisticated form of the bachelor lifestyle and you may be right!
Last night, I attended a reception in honor of Bob Lutz and the founding of a scholorship in his name. The event was held at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan just north of GM’s Technical Center in Warren. On display were many of GM’s finest production and concept cars. Here’s a collection of photos from the night. The Heritage Center is not open to the public so this was a great opportunity to see many of GMs best cars under one roof at one time – everything from the Chevette to the Impala SS.
With car keys becoming more electronic with transponders, buttons, key cards, etc., how about a key that provides some REAL functionality? Enter the Swiss Army Knife car key. If you have a small Swiss Army Knife or multi-tool on your key chain or belt, you know what I mean. These small implements come in very handy and if you are handy, than this is the key for you. It would fit especially well with commercial work vehicles or off-road vehicles. So instead of keys that are ’styled’ to fit a brand, the time has come for keys that are a functional complement of the product.
As a former employee and long time automotive industry veteran, it pains me to see General Motors continue to slowly disintegrate. The causes are many -ranging from falsely believing they are building what Americans want, to thinking that all their brands are relevant in the market. As a result of years and years of market leadership, Generous Motors has grown old and crotchety. GM has been unable to recognize that the world is changing around them and unwilling to change with it. How else can you explain the optimism expressed each year as their market share has declined? How strange it is to hear one executive after another brag about the virtues of their overlapping products and brands? And how odd it is that the largest company has done the least to address it’s own overgrown bureaucracy? But the old ship GM which has taken too long to change course has hit an iceberg and is taking on water fast. Can ships this big be steered faster? They have no choice but to do so, and doing so requires drastic measures which are foreign concepts to a large, ponderous corporate culture.
Here it is – my 2001 Jeep Cherokee Limited 4×4. It’s got 63000 miles but runs perfectly and is in near showroom condition with just a few battle scars from the suburban front. What’s a Jeep without a little patina? The thing I love about my Jeep is what I call Clarity of Purpose. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Solid axles both front and rear, the Jeep Cherokee XJ was one of the first SUVs on the market and it shows. Compared to modern SUVs, the XJ is short on cabin room, the steering lacks any on center (or off center feel), interior noise levels are high, and the ride is rough. But you don’t have to live with the other compromises that come with 3rd row seats, below the floor spare tires, low step in heights, and suburban lifestyles. Click 
The 2003 Pikes Peak Quattro Concept took the luxury crossover SUV segment to a conclusion that many other brands had tried to achieve. Audi created a refined, coherent, substantial, and upscale design that was truly it’s own. There was no attempt at rugged and tough SUV imagery. There were no faux off road accessories. The design stood on it’s own and eventually led to the Q7 – arguably, one of the very best looking designs in any segment, at any price. The production Q7 even improves on the Pikes Peak concept – especially from the rear with more definition to the rear lamps. The massive wheels and wide stance carry through as does the huge Audi ‘intake’ nose. My only negative is the massive bulk of the design when you see the vehicle in person. And is it just me or do Audi production interiors always look better than their concept interiors?!
I’ve always had a fascination with Maserati and that interest jumped when the Biturbo came out. Here was a compact car that had a bulldog stance, great design (if a little Baroqueish) and a rich, sumptuous interior with the classic center console analog clock all too common in lesser cars today.
