I was fortunate to be part of about 50 presenters invited to the Lean Summit at FastCap in WA. What an awesome learning experience it was to be part of this. Many of us have joined a public group on FaceBook called LEAN PURSUIT. We are able to share our experiences & stay connected with each other. Please join the group if you would like to learn more about LEAN!
Category: Go Lean!
Going lean is a life changing event. It is not easy, but to have the thought process of continually improving everything you do will slowly change your life!
Paul Akers key note speach at the Lean Summit 2015
Paul Akers is the owner of FastCap Company in WA. Many of us had the honor of attending the Lean Summit 2015 that he & his wife LeeAnne so graciously hosted at both his house & place of business. Many lives (and businesses) are changed because of it. We look forward to implementing much of what was learned by all of the awesome presenters! Remember, stop the struggle! Owners, get on the shop floor! Paul discusses his new APP called LEAN PD. (Lean Personal Development) Remember, the key to being a Lean Leader, you must change yourself! Links will be posted as they become available.
The American Innovator – Lean Truck
Paul Akers, of The American Innovator broadcast, checks out all the incredible lean innovations Brian Way incorporated into his work truck for B.P. Way – Millwork & Installations.
Do you have this problem with packing tape?
My Lean Kitchen
Interested in learning and/or applying some basic Lean principles to your kitchen?
Check out my other blog!
A Tricked Out Miter Saw Cart
A Tricked Out Miter Saw Cart
Five wheels and a half-sheet of plywood are all it took to build this ingenious mobile base.
The mobile base carries a miter saw stand and multiple tools—including a compressor and dust extractor. The stand is a BestFence Pro 3 and the dust hood is a prototype of a new ChopShop hood. Both tools are from FastCap. On the stand is an 8 1/2-inch Hitachi slide miter saw.
The rolling base reduces the amount of time we spend walking to the saw, by making it easy to keep the cut station close to the work.
To keep the stand from sliding around, the legs drop into 2-inch rubber pipe caps screwed to the base. A plywood frame holds the dust collector in place. Note the tool bag tucked between the compressor and vac.
Cutoffs and trash go into the orange bucket—which pivots out for easy access and tucks away for transport.
My company installs millwork and trim on commercial projects, some so large we might have to walk ¼ to ½ mile inside the building to reach the place where the work is to occur. And the work might be spread out over a large area, as was the case on a recent project where we trimmed a ¼-mile long corridor in a hospital.
At the beginning of the job I realized we’d have to set up our cut station multiple times or spend a lot of time walking back and forth from wherever it was. I didn’t feel like wasting that kind of time so I built a mobile base for our miter saw stand from a sheet of plywood, some casters, and a handful of fasteners. Including design time, the base took just over two hours to build—time well spent given the countless hours we saved by keeping the cut station close to the work.
The base has five 2-inch rubber casters, two at each end and one in the middle. The back edge is stiffened by a 6-inch vertical rip of plywood. The center wheel is at the non-stiffened edge so the base can float (flex) over humps in concrete floors. Because the casters are small, they offer enough resistance that there’s no need to lock them when using the saw; the stand only moves when I want it to.
The base was made to fit FastCap’s BestFence stand—though really, it could have been designed to carry any commercial or home-made saw stand. To keep the stand in position, each of its four feet lands in a 2-inch rubber pipe cap that is screwed to the base. Between the legs we carry a small ultra-quiet compressor, dust extractor, and the safety cones the hospital requires us to use. The dust extractor is held in a cradle to keep it from rolling around and the trash can swings out on a plywood pivot for quick and easy access. With all of this stuff on the base there is still room to store a tool bag, nail guns, and other small items. We hang our hoses and cords from the BestFence handles. When it’s time to move we simply roll the base to wherever the cut station needs to be.
I’ve built this cart more than once, modifying the design to suit the job at hand. Typically, I unload at the loading dock, put everything on the base, and then roll it to the work area. If there are stairs, I won’t load the cart till I get everything to the top-at which point I’m able to roll it around the facility. The base saves us a lot of time by making it easy to keep our cut station and associated tools close to the work area. We use it in much the same way as we use our mobile tool cart.
BP's WAY 