AE: A Class Act - Page 3

That and the very stiff leather that they use for some reason.

AE is a good company and I am glad they are in the United States providing jobs. Their shoes are far better quality than the vast majority of shoes produced world wide. Just look at the feet around you the next time you go outside.

It is a big plus they try to please their customers with good service. I imagine the OP will be wearing his Lubbocks regularly and may return to purchase again in the future.

I have been more than pleased with AE. I bought a pair of Bel Airs from them that instantly crinkled up on one shoe after wearing them for about 15 minutes. I sent them back and got a full refund. All the others shoes I've bought have been great.

While it's true that every company should strive for zero defects it rarely happens. Somethimes things go wrong. I understand that.

It's how a company handles things when they do go wrong which determines if I will buy from them again. If I know that a company will rectify any mistakes quiickly and easily then I have no problems buying from them

My last 3 pairs of AE had defects after a few months. On 2 pairs the rubber part of the heel started to separate, on one pair the heel no longer lines up, and on 2 pairs the sole itself does not line up with the foot bed. Not to mention that I sent a pair to be recrafted and it came back with scratches and part of the leather gouged out. Since I could not prove they were not like that before I sent they they wouldn't help me.

As a result, I do not think I'll own another pair of AE shoes again.

Isn't lean manufacturing just about finding ways to work the hell out of your staff? As I understand it, it's incrementally giving them fewer and fewer resources to work with and forcing them to get more efficient or get cut.

Nope, you are 100% wrong and whomever taught you that has no idea what they are doing. Lean is about analizing a process and finding the wasteful activities and then eliminating those activities.

An example of this is a quality inspector at the end of the production line. The customer is not paying for a quality inspector, he/she is paying for a quality product. The step of inspecting the product is considered "non value added" as there is no additional value added to the product (eg. you can't charge .50 more because you have an inspector on the production line). In addition, an inspector will only catch around 80% of the defects.

So, what do you do. You look at the data that has been collected and go back to the source of the defect. You then implement certain tools and teams to eliminate that defect and create a process that cannot produce that defect.

This os one of the many tools used, and no one is saying to pull the inspector from the end of the line, simply work toward 100% quality. If done correctly, lean manufacturing makes everyones job easier and it is about working smarter not harder.

but then how do you identify new defects if there is no inspector? you may simply eliminate one defect and create another.

Then what's that thing that Toyota does where they lower the workforce at a station by a %, then when it stabilizes again, repeat to try to get all the inefficiency out (I.E. people who aren't working their ass off).

Sorry for the derail btw...

Please re-read what I wrote above. I never said that the inspector is eliminated. More defects always come up and that is why the process is called "continuous improvement".


I never worked for Toyota so I can't speak for them. However, what you described is not true "Lean Manufacturing".

so then what is lean about that. You still have the inspector, you've just corrected a process. That seems more like learning from mistakes than any sort of lean manufacturing.

Imho, lean manufacturing would be having each stage of the line do a quick quality inspection and stop the line if problems are found, ala toyota.

Yes, that is part of it. There are hundreds of books written on the subject and various schools of thought. A one paragraph example is obviously not all-inclusive. It was intended to demonstrate that lean is not about making workers work faster and harder, rather analyze what they are doing and eliminate the non-value added activities. Line level loading is a lean tool that is often misunderstood as making people work "harder", but is not really the case once the wastes in the process are eliminated.