Learn By doing by Fujio Cho, Toyota Motor Corporation

"We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn't understand and therefore, we ask them why don't you just go ahead and take action; try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial your realize another mistake or another thing you didn't like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge."

"Fujio Cho, Toyota Motor Corporation"

How to burn fat in 15 minutes

We all have heard that doing low intensity cardio (like walking) for more than 45 minutes is ideal to burn fat....but what options do we have if we do not have 45 minutes or more to do our cardio?

Well the answer to this is High intensity cardio. High intensity cardio means that you are going to work your heart at bout 75% to 85% of your maximum heart rate. On the other hand low intensity cardio works your heart at about 55% to 65%.

With high intensity cardio, you burn more calories quicker. To illustrate this, let's say that you walk (low intensity cardio) for 20 minutes and burned 100 calories, about 50 of this calories will be coming from fat stored in your body. (50 calories is about 5 grams of fat).

Now if you were doing high intensity training for 10 minutes, you could burn up to 160 to 180 calories. 40% of these calories will be coming from fat stored in your body. This means that you will burn 64 to 70 calories from fat in only ten minutes or better yet you will be burning 6 to 7 grams of fat.

As you can see you will be burning more fat in less time. Low-intensity exercise only burns calories while you are actually exercising. That means the moment you stop exercising, your caloric expenditure goes back down to nearly baseline levels. Within minutes, you're not burning many more calories than if you hadn't done anything at all.

High-intensity exercise, on the other hand, continues to boost your metabolism long after you're done (often up to 24 hours after, depending on the length and intensity of the training session). This means you're continuing to burn many more calories all day long!

Also it is worth mentioning that high intensity cardio stimulate more your muscle, helping in some cases to develop more.......and we know that the more muscle and better tone, the more calories that we burn while we are not exercising.

Here are some examples of high intensity training.

On a Bike,
ride your bike for 2 min at a easy pace, then increase the intensity, either by increasing the resistance or the speed and ride the bike this way for 1 min. then go back to the easy pace for 1 min, and then after 1 min go back to the higher intensity pace. Try this for ten minutes and you will see the difference, besides it is a fun activity since you will be challenging yourself.

If you have 20 min for your exercise, try different time intervals, for example start with 4 min easy pace, then 2 min at a higher intensity and 30 sec at at even higher intensity then go back to the easy pace. The combination are endless and the only limit is your imagination, the key is to get your heart to 75-85% of your maximum heart rate.

How much food to eat when trying to lose fat - Portion sizes

How much should we eat if we are working out?
A good way to measure the amount of food that we need to eat is to measure with our hands.
We know that all our meals should have a combination of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. We use our hands to measure the amount of protein and carbs that we need to it. The assumption here is that we are trying to lose fat, so, to keep it simple we need to eat the same "palm" size portions for proteins and carbs. Example, a palm size portion of protein (fish, meat, eggs) and a palm size portion of carbs (rice, or potatoes, etc). Since we know that fats are more calorie dense that the proteins and carbs, what we do is take a teaspoon of fat, (peanut butter, olive oil, etc).
This quick tip should help on keeping things easy when it comes to measure how much food to eat.

Limiting your cravings when losing fat

Fats are a very important tool to limit your cravings while trying to lose fat.

yes, in order to lose fat you have to eat fat!

I am talking about good fats, not the fats that come in pizzas or hot dogs. The good fats are the ones that come from peanut butter, olive oil, almonds fish, etc). Fats are broken down slow, helping us in avoiding cravings for "bad" food.



Make sure as well that you are having frequent meals. Having frequent meals helps keep the blood sugar levels from drooping to low. When the blood sugar decreases or brain send signals to find food and it is at this moment when we are tempted to eat any sugary meals that can get the blood sugar back up.
For this reason keep having your small 6 meals during the day this will help you avoid cravings for "bad" food and will also help you on burning the fat you want to get rid of.

How to generate ideas for improvement - Machine related

The Following questions help in the generation of ideas to improve the conditions affecting the MACHINE

Can we improve the processing method?
Can we improve the effective use of machines, computers, and other facilities?
Can we use machines to do the job?
Can we adequately maintain the service of machines?
Can we modify, maintain, or upgrade to improve the performance of the machines?
Can we identify the common causes of machine failure and find solutions to prevent them?
Can we think of improving tools and fixtures to do the work better?
Can we think of applying the tools in other areas?
Can we improve the procedures for machine or facility breakdown?

How to generate ideas for improvement - Employee related

The Following questions help in the generation of ideas to improve the conditions affecting the Employee (MAN)

Can we educate ourselves better in what we do?
Can we communicate better among ourselves?
Can we improve the new employee or temporary staff introduction package?
Can we direct people to the person who is in charge of a certain job without any trouble?
Can we effectively share work when overloaded
Can we do more cross-training and job rotation?
Can we improve the storage areas for personal belongings?
Can we improve the condition of the work environment, especially related to health and safety?
Can we improve the interface with the customer, internal or external?
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How to generate more ides for improvement

Sometimes we might feel that we can not come up with suggestions and that we have looked at all possibles opportunities for improvements. When that happens we need to step back and look at our activities and processes from a different perspective. The attached check list can be used by anybody to try to come up with more ideas for improvement. As always I encourage the team leaders, supervisors and managers to ask these questions while on the shop floor or office. The answer to these questions will be opportunities for improvement.

Try to focus on these questions affecting the way we do things, the method that we use.

Can we simplify, combine, or eliminate our jobs, materials, parts, etc?
Can we eliminate the redundant work done at multiple locations?
Can we do it right the first time?
Can we clarify the standards better and practice managing by exception?
Can we change the work method?
Can we improve the use of Standard operation procedures so that it is easy to follow?
Can we improve the training method? Do we have one?
Can we improve the housekeeping and workplace organization for materials, tools, parts, etc?
Can we improve the capacity of the operation, machine, or line?
Can we improve the layout?
Can we reduce the setup time?
Can we stop overproduction?