Not sure where to start? Pick your path: See full guide →
👤
New Supervisor
Just promoted or starting a new role? Begin here.
🏭
Operations Leader
Running a floor or facility? Build your operating system.
📊
Quality / CI Engineer
Driving improvements and reducing defects? Start here.
⚙️
New Industrial Engineer
Fresh IE grad or new to the plant floor? Follow this path.
💡
Just Exploring
Curious about lean and smart manufacturing? Start here.
📖 Foundations & Principles (13)
🚀
Getting Started Guide
New here? Start with this guide — pick your role, follow a learning path, and find the right tools.
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🐢
The Long Start
The opposite of a quick start. Every single feature explained like you're five, in 10 thorough modules. Excruciatingly complete.
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🏭
Lean Manufacturing
Eliminate waste, maximize value — the Toyota Production System and its core principles.
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🗑️
8 Wastes (TIMWOOD+S)
Identify and eliminate all 8 forms of waste — the foundation of every lean improvement.
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🗺️
Value Stream Mapping
Visualize your entire process flow to find hidden waste and bottlenecks.
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🔗
Theory of Constraints
Identify and exploit the one constraint that limits your entire system's output.
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🔄
Push vs Pull Systems
Why pull systems beat push for WIP, lead time, and flexibility.
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💧
One-Piece Flow
Why processing one unit at a time is faster than batching — the math that proves it.
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🛡️
Jidoka (Built-In Quality)
Build quality into the process — stop-and-fix culture, andon, and never passing defects forward.
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📋
Kanban Systems
Signal-based pull replenishment — 5 types, 6 rules, and the formula for kanban quantity.
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⚖️
Heijunka (Production Leveling)
Level volume and mix to eliminate peaks, valleys, overtime spikes, and inventory chaos.
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♻️
Kaizen
Small daily improvements that compound into transformational results over time.
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📊
Six Sigma
Data-driven defect reduction using DMAIC methodology and statistical process control.
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🛠️ Methods & Tools (15)
📋
Standard Work
The foundation of every lean system — document, implement, and improve the best-known method.
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⏱️
SMED & Quick Changeover
Reduce changeover time from hours to minutes with the 4-stage SMED method.
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✨
5S Methodology
Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain — workplace organization that sticks.
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⚖️
Line Balancing
Yamazumi charts, operator balance, and distributing work evenly to match takt time.
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🏗️
Cell Design & Layout
U-cells, spaghetti diagrams, and 5 layout principles for minimal travel and maximum flow.
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⏱️
Time Studies
Stopwatch studies, MOST, work sampling — measuring work to build standard times.
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🛡️
Poka-Yoke (Error Proofing)
Design processes that make errors impossible — not just detectable.
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📄
A3 Problem Solving
Toyota's structured thinking on a single page — 7 sections that mirror PDCA.
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📊
Pareto Analysis (80/20)
Focus on the vital few causes that drive 80% of problems — data-driven prioritization.
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⚠️
FMEA
Failure Mode & Effects Analysis — identify and prevent failures before they happen.
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📦
Batch Size Optimization
Why smaller batches are almost always better — EPE, lead time math, and the SMED connection.
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🚚
Material Flow & Logistics
Point-of-use delivery, milk runs, water spiders, and eliminating internal transportation waste.
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🔍
Root Cause Analysis Deep Dive
5 Whys, Ishikawa fishbone, 8D, and Fault Tree Analysis — all the RCA tools side by side.
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🧪
Design of Experiments (DOE)
Full factorial, fractional factorial, and response surface designs — the most powerful IE optimization tool.
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⚡
Kaizen Event Leadership
How to plan, facilitate, and sustain results from 3-5 day rapid improvement events.
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✅ Quality & Process Control (7)
📊
OEE
The single most important metric for measuring how effectively your equipment is used.
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📈
Statistical Process Control
Control charts, special vs common cause variation, and the cardinal sin of tampering.
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🔢
Process Capability (Cp/Cpk)
Can your process consistently meet spec? What the numbers mean and how to improve them.
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💰
Cost of Quality
Prevention, appraisal, and failure costs — the hidden factory consuming 15-25% of revenue.
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🔍
Layered Process Audits
Multiple leadership levels verifying standard work is followed — daily, not annually.
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📏
Measurement & Metrology
Calipers, micrometers, Gage R&R, CMMs, and calibration — measure right before you control.
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📐
Blueprint Reading & GD&T
Engineering drawings, GD&T symbols, tolerance stack-ups, and when to question vs. escalate.
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⚙️ Equipment & Maintenance (5)
🔧
Total Productive Maintenance
The 8 pillars, 6 big losses, and the system for zero breakdowns and zero defects.
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🧹
Autonomous Maintenance
The 7 steps of Jishu Hozen — operators as the first line of defense against equipment failure.
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🔮
Preventive & Predictive Maintenance
From reactive to predictive — the maintenance strategy spectrum and how to climb it.
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⏸️
Downtime Analysis
Coding systems, Pareto by cause, and turning vague "we were down" into actionable data.
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🚨
Andon Systems & Escalation
Signal systems that surface problems instantly and escalate to the right level.
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🎯 Leadership & Culture (8)
🎯
Lean Leadership
Go see, ask why, show respect — the daily behaviors that make or break transformations.
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📅
Leader Standard Work
Daily, weekly, and monthly routines that make good leadership repeatable and auditable.
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👣
Gemba Walks
Go see, ask why, show respect — structured floor leadership that builds trust and finds problems.
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📋
Daily Management System
Visual boards, tier meetings, and leader standard work — the operating rhythm of lean.
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👁️
Visual Management
Make performance, problems, and standards visible at a glance — no interpretation needed.
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🌱
Building CI Culture
The 4-level maturity model, psychological safety, and the Problems Not People philosophy.
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💡
Suggestion Systems (Kaizen Teian)
How to get 50+ improvement ideas per person per year with a system that actually works.
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🦺
Safety Culture & BBS
The safety maturity ladder, leading indicators, near-miss reporting, and behavior-based safety.
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👤 People Development & Daily Ops (12)
👤
New Supervisor: First 90 Days
The 3-phase roadmap for your first 90 days leading a manufacturing team.
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📚
Training Within Industry (TWI)
The proven 4-step method for training operators quickly and correctly — since the 1940s.
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🤝
Cross-Training & Flexibility
Skill matrices, cross-training plans, and eliminating single-point-of-failure risks.
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🧠
Problem Solving for Supervisors
Contain-Correct-Prevent, 5-minute root cause, and building a daily problem-solving habit.
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🤝
Shift Handoff Best Practices
Eliminate information loss at every shift change with structured handoffs.
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🧍
Ergonomics in Manufacturing
6 risk factors, the power zone, and practical improvements that pay for themselves.
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🤜
Conflict Resolution & Difficult Conversations
SBI feedback, progressive discipline, de-escalation — handling the hardest part of supervision.
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📢
Running Effective Meetings & Shift Briefings
The 5-minute shift start-up, tier meeting structures, and facilitation without dominating.
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🎓
Onboarding & Training New Operators
Design a 2-week onboarding plan, create job instruction sheets, and build a buddy system.
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💬
Managing Up
Communicate with your plant manager — escalation, status updates, and advocating for resources.
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📈
Performance Management & Goal Setting
SMART goals, skill matrices, performance reviews, recognition, and attendance management.
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🛡️
OSHA & Regulatory Compliance
LOTO, confined space, HazCom, PPE, incident investigation — what supervisors are legally responsible for.
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📆 Planning & Strategy (12)
📆
S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning)
Align demand, supply, and finance into one plan with the monthly 5-step cycle.
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📅
Production Scheduling
Scheduling hierarchy, Heijunka, sequence optimization, and schedule adherence.
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⚙️
Capacity Planning
Rated vs demonstrated capacity, bottleneck planning, and the 3 planning horizons.
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🎯
Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment)
Align the entire organization from boardroom to shop floor with catchball and the X-matrix.
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📦
Inventory Management
True carrying cost, ABC classification, and the water-and-rocks analogy.
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📊
Manufacturing KPIs (SQDCM)
Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, Morale — cascading metrics from operator to plant level.
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💵
Financial Metrics for Operations
Cost per unit, ROI, payback — speak finance's language to get improvements funded.
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📦
Supplier Management
Supplier scorecards, total cost of ownership, and partnership vs. adversarial approaches.
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🏭
Lean Warehousing
FIFO, ABC slotting, pick path optimization, and lean principles for the warehouse.
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🚨
Crisis Management & Contingency Planning
Equipment failure playbooks, supply chain disruption response, and business continuity basics.
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💰
Lean Accounting & Cost Management
Value stream costing, box scores, and why traditional cost accounting undermines lean.
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🌿
Sustainability & Green Manufacturing
Energy management, waste reduction, carbon footprint, ISO 14001, and the lean-green connection.
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📅 Project Management (13)
📅
Critical Path Method (CPM)
Identify the longest dependent-task chain that determines your project's minimum duration.
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📊
PERT
Three-point estimates, beta distributions, and probabilistic scheduling for uncertain projects.
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⛓️
Critical Chain (CCPM)
Goldratt's TOC applied to projects — strip hidden safety, pool buffers, deliver faster.
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🕸️
DAGs in Scheduling
The graph theory behind every project schedule — topological sort, longest path, and parallelism.
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📋
Work Breakdown Structure
Decompose projects into estimable, assignable work packages with the 100% rule.
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📊
Gantt Charts
Build, read, and track project timelines — bars, dependencies, milestones, and baselines.
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💰
Earned Value Management
PV, EV, AC, CPI, SPI — the metrics that tell you if your project is truly on track.
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⚖️
Resource Leveling & Smoothing
Resolve overallocation — leveling vs. smoothing, priority rules, and resource histograms.
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⚠️
Project Risk Management
Risk registers, probability-impact matrices, response strategies, and manufacturing project risks.
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🎯
Scope Management & Change Control
Define, baseline, and protect project scope — scope creep kills more projects than bad estimates.
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🎲
Monte Carlo Simulation
Simulate thousands of schedule scenarios to set deadlines based on confidence levels, not hope.
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💼
Project Portfolio Management
Select, prioritize, and balance projects to maximize organizational value — do fewer things better.
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👥
Stakeholder Management
Power-interest grids, RACI, communication plans — get the people right and the project follows.
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🔄 Transformation & Change (5)
⚠️
Why Lean Transformations Fail
The 12 failure patterns that kill 70% of initiatives — and how to avoid every one of them.
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💪
Overcoming Resistance to Change
Why people really resist, what to do at each level, and the small wins strategy that works.
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🔒
Sustaining Lean Gains
Why improvements backslide in 30 days and the 5-element framework that prevents it.
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📋
Lean Maturity Assessment
Score your organization across 10 dimensions and build a prioritized improvement roadmap.
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💼
Lean Office & Transactional
Apply lean to office processes — where 95% of lead time is waiting, not working.
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🔗 Enterprise Systems & Integration (6)
🏢
ERP Systems
How Enterprise Resource Planning works — MRP logic, master scheduling, BOM management, and why ERP is the backbone of production planning.
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🏭
MES Systems
Manufacturing Execution Systems bridge the gap between ERP planning and shop floor reality with real-time tracking.
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📐
PLM Systems
Product Lifecycle Management — managing the product from design through manufacturing with BOM control and change management.
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📊
Business Intelligence
Turn raw manufacturing data into actionable insights — dashboards, analytics, and the 4 levels of BI maturity.
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📅
Forward vs Backward Scheduling
The two fundamental scheduling strategies — when to push forward from today vs. pull backward from the due date.
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🔗
Production Systems Ecosystem
Interactive guide: how PLM, ERP, MES, scheduling, and BI combine to form a complete production system.
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🤖 Automation & Industry 4.0 (3)
🤖
Industry 4.0 & Smart Manufacturing
The technology stack, digital twins, AI/ML on the floor, OT cybersecurity, and maturity models.
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📡
IIoT & Device Integration
Sensors, OPC-UA, MQTT, edge vs cloud, data architecture, and building your first IIoT pilot.
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🦾
Robotics & Automation
Cobots vs traditional robots, PLC basics, automation ROI, and building your plant roadmap.
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📊 Data & Analytics (2)
📈 Career Development (1)
🏭 Industry-Specific Operations (7)
✈️
Aerospace & Defense
Takt decomposition, precedence diagrams, capacity assessment for long-cycle assembly, AS9100, FAI, and configuration management.
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🚗
Automotive
The never-stopping line, JPH, andon culture, JIT/JIS delivery, APQP/PPAP, and platform-based mixed-model production.
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🍞
Food & Beverage
HACCP, allergen management, CIP, batch processing, lot traceability, and shelf life constraints.
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💊
Pharmaceutical & Medical Device
GMP, validation (IQ/OQ/PQ), batch records, cleanroom operations, 21 CFR Part 11, and FDA inspection readiness.
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💻
Electronics & Semiconductor
SMT lines, wafer fab scheduling, yield management, ESD control, and quality at PPM/PPB scale.
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🛢️
Oil, Gas & Process Industries
Continuous processing, PSM, HAZOP, turnaround scheduling, DCS/APC, and asset integrity management.
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📦
Warehousing & Distribution
WMS, slotting optimization, pick methodologies, engineered labor standards, and warehouse automation.
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