While working on a machine, you touch a control transformer and it's blisteringly hot. Well over 200 degrees. You check it and it's not carrying much load at all. It's cycling about every 8 seconds, only on for maybe 2 seconds... and pulling less than half the rated load. It's switching on the primary side with a SSR. Why is it running so hot? What could we do about it? Answer: Every time the SSR closes, it's not just turning on a small downstream load, it is re-energizin

Sustaining in 5S isn't hard. But there is a trick to it. You have to do 2 things well: 1) Make success something the operators can control. 2) Check it daily. But everyone fails at #1. The night-shift operator takes a tool home. By the time dayshift figures out it's gone, there's nothing to do about it, even with an audit. Here is the easy way to beat it. Before you add some tool to a 5S board, set up a shelf that has space to hold spares of everything you'll 5S. In a bucket