Odyssey 500

When you are designing that great bar or lounge you want to set up, the last thing it should ever be is boring. After all, the reason anyone would want to hang out in your bar or lounge, whether its a public place or your private little hideaway just for friends, is because its a fun place to be. And besides serving drinks, not only do you want the people who come to the bar to be interesting and fun, every aspect of the place should be uplifting, interesting and inspire relaxation and friendship between the people gathering there.

Its easy enough to get some help to create an interesting interior design that involves the wallpaper, the ceiling fans, the paintings on the wall and other amusing things that you might keep around the bar to get the conversation flowing with your guests. But why would you want to stop looking for interesting and thought provoking interior decorating ideas at just those things? The truth is that even the bar chairs and other furniture can become as much a part of the fun and creativity of your bar life as any other part of your decorations.

You don’t have to look very far when you are researching chair designs to realize that the history of furniture design has had a rich legacy in the world of art. A visit to any fine art museum will be an eye opening experience because you can see that some of the truly great artists throughout history also expressed their creativity in furniture design. And the variety of designs that reflect the artistic ideas that dominated each period of art history also come out in the design of the chairs interior decorators liked to use in lounges and bars of their time.

Taking that tour of artistic history, particularly just before you start shopping for the furniture for your bar or lounge is an instructional step. By getting inspired how you can integrate wonderfully creative designs into your bar based on what has been done with furniture in lounges over history, that inspiration will make you want to do something interesting, unusual and maybe even artistic when you buy the furniture for patrons or guest to enjoy. In fact, one great way to approach not only the chair design but to fit what you buy in furniture for your bar to fit in perfectly is to go with a historic motif.

There are many furniture manufacturers who can provide you with period styles for your bar chairs that will help create an old time feel for your place. You can go with a french revolution style, an early American style that might create the feel of the TV show Cheers that is suggestive of a bar in Boston during the revolution. Or you can go with something very pop art or modernistic, even creating a futuristic feel like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey. If you allow great eras and even pictures or movies of that era to inspire you, you won’t have to look very closely to notice how distinctive and artistic the chairs of each era is and get inspired to find great furniture for a great new bar or lounge.

This is not to say that artists of our era are not branching out into furniture design as well. So as you are browsing art sites for inspiration for great chair ideas for your bar, don’t overlook modern art sites as well. Of course, seeing all the wildly creative things there may not take you in that direction. But it can open your mind to what can be done. You might see anything from a full portrait painted on the structure of a chair, to chairs of such wild designs, one wonders how to go about even sitting on them.

But you don’t have to go with designs so bizarre that they dominate the room. There are other ways to make your chairs fun and creative and even give yourself lots of flexibility over time to make changes. Buying bar chairs that are meant to be covered means you can find new creative covers that can change the look of your lounge in a snap and for very little cost. And if the chairs are lush and large so you can add throw pillows and decorative blankets across the back, that would open up a world of colors and designs for you to play with anytime the look and feel of your lounge got a bit boring to you.

The materials you pick as the basic construction of your bar stools and chairs will have a big effect on the atmosphere in your place. Its really amazing to see how certain decors inspire your crowd to behave in different ways and may actually change what people drink and the kind of crowd you bring to your bar. For example, wood bar stools not only have a antique feel to them but they blend in with the wood of the bar and the room and create a quiet, reflective and cozy feel. This kind of decor very easily inspires romance so you may find your bar becoming the location of choice for young lovers, just because you made some sophisticated choices of decorating and furniture.

But don’t limit yourself to just what can be had in catalogs or on Internet furniture sites. You can be the source of some real creativity in what the bar chairs and furniture look like in your own place. If you have a flair for art and creating inspirational pieces, you can start with unfinished furniture and plan your bar furniture from the ground up. You can use your tour of museums and antique stores and even modern art sites on the internet for inspiration. And whether you just refinish the chairs to look elegant and warm or you go with some creative patterns and colors, the chairs in your place will be all about you and you will have lots of stories to tell when people get interested in the very unique things you have to show in your bar.

The important thing is that in every step of the way as you plan the motif, the layout and the furniture of your bar is to have fun with it. If you look at what you have lined up for the chairs for your customers and they leave you cold and uninspired, go back and start over because it if isn’t fun to you, it wont be fun for your guests or visitors to your bar. And by using that measure, the “is it fun to me” measure, the final decision you make for the furniture for your lounge will be just right and one you and your guests will be happy with for a lounge time to come.

Of the thousands—yes, thousands—of classical movies I have seen, a few stick in the recall room in the house of the head as if they ha taken the initiative to represent all classical movies of all time. Granted, the debate continues on what is the actual definition of the term, “classical”. Such positions hold that the term refers to all that belongs to a particular period of history, the classical era.

Others believe classical is determined by quality, by degrees of excellence and definitive, authoritative license, subsequently. Still others find that classical, as in classical movie, means that which is appreciated or valued by a majority and which stands up to the test of all tests—time. If it endures beyond its own era and extends into the future eras, the continued lives, the classrooms and courtrooms and libraries, it is worthy of being deemed a classic.

So, as I hold beliefs somewhere in the middle, there, I will merely discuss, or mention, or list a few of my favorite classical movies. That is, I will pretend that I have been asked to recommend classical movies that one must see before one dies. Here we go:

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (“But you ahhhre, Blanche…ya ahhre in a wheelchair….”)

Gone with the Wind (yes, the opportunity in this postmodern age to suspend disbelief about the realistic roles of men and women and feel that nasty egocentric Rhett grab you roughly…swoon.)

Citizen Kane (when she’s doing that psychotically large puzzle in that massive, clammy space, her nasal, piercing pitch echoing in the background as he is shown, brooding and frustrated, in the foreground—the shadows as ominous as the dialogue and the story this far….cripes)

2001, Space Odyssey (because of many things, but also because you have to watch it many times to “get” it…or any part of it, besides H.A.L. and his creepy megalomaniacal ways…. “Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”)

Those of you filmic aficionados might balk that Casablanca is not on the list or has not been mentioned. This is silly, especially for one who has seen so many classical movies in particular and movies in general, but every time it came on, I would turn the channel.

Then, one day a dynamo od a learning center director told me that I must have been avoiding Casablanca for a reason: she said that whomever you watch Casablanca—the king of the classical movies—with, you will end up marrying. Hmmm. I wonder, will he have to be a classical movies fanatic, too?

Lean manufacturing’s main keys are the following:



Perfect first-time quality – quest for zero defects, revealing and solving problems at the source



Waste minimization – eliminating all non value-adding activities and safety nets, maximization of scarce resources (capital, people and space)



Continuous improvement – reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity and information sharing, pull processing: products are pulled from the consumer end, not pushed from the production end



Flexibility – producing different mixes or greater diversity of products quickly, without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production, building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers through collaborative risk sharing, cost sharing and information sharing arrangements.



The world’s economy today is always changing and more competitive than ever. There are new companies created everyday and old ones tightening their grip on their thrifty empires. For any of these companies to remain successful or become successful, they must find a way to stay on top of their game and please the customer better than ever before. Increasingly, successful companies are turning to lean business practices (lean manufacturing, lean customer service, lean office, lean distribution, lean public sector) as the answer to staying on top of their industry. Lean 5S is not necessarily a particular way of producing a product. It is instead a philosophical way of thinking.

McDonald’s can be said to have recently implemented a lean technique. McDonald’s no longer makes an abundance of food to wait in holding bins in anticipation of a meal time rush. If a rush does not happen, then there is an obvious waste of food as well as labor. Instead, McDonald’s has focused on making the food when the customer orders to provide a fresher and hotter meal. A focus on consistent labor training and improvement is the key to keeping this service speedy and reliable. By implementing this new “leaner” way of thinking, waste of food and labor has been minimized, which is the main goal of the lean process.

Lean manufacturing was actually born in 1914 with Henry Ford and the mass production moving assembly line. Lean relies on keeping a steady flow of product out the door to the customer. Ford’s system did exactly that, though it was missing some of the most important and common factors in today’s lean philosophy. The original Ford assembly line was putting out thousands of Model T cars at a vast rate. The problem was that it did not matter what the customer demand or requests were; there was a base black Model T available. They didn’t worry about customer satisfaction or demand whatsoever. The Ford motor company stuck with mass production and had a large stock of inventory (waste) just sitting around. Although Toyota is credited with beginning Lean Production with their Toyota Production System, the roots of “lean” date back as far as the 16th century. In 1570, King Henry III of France watched in amazement as the Venice Arsenal built galley ships in less than an hour using the continuous flow process.

Later in the 1940’s The Toyoda Loom Company had problems of its own. After World War II when Japanese industry was decimated, the Toyoda family decided to extend Toyoda Automatic Loom Company to start an automotive company. They had some cash but did not have the infrastructure. They certainly could not compete directly with the established companies like Ford. Therefore, their sole demand was in Japan, which meant supplying small quantities with high variety, while Ford was selling any color Model T you wanted as long as it was black. Toyota also had to rely on outside supplier partners to make the capital investment needed to get in business. Taiichi Ohno, leader of the Toyota manufacturing enterprise, came up with a system now called the Toyota Production System (TPS). He did not do this alone though. Ohno diligently studied Henry Ford and his company’s philosophies on manufacturing. Toyota and Japan had the problems of not enough space, resources, or demand to compete with the larger automobile manufacturers of America. By assessing and solving these problems, Ohno began the TPS and the manufacturing revolution known today as Lean Manufacturing.

After WWII, Ford was ten times more productive than Toyota, but between 1945 and 1970, Ohno’s Toyota Production System was revolutionizing the Japanese automobile industry. It was during this time the rest of the world and particularly the United States started realizing the overwhelming benefits of lean manufacturing. The U.S. auto industry paid particular notice when The Machine that Changed the World was published highlighting the great accomplishments of Toyota and the huge gap between Japanese quality and productivity and auto companies in the West. The book coined the term “lean manufacturing” because Toyota was doing more with less of everything – less space, less people, less capital and less inventory.

As said before, Lean’s main goal is to eliminate or at least minimize waste. Lean 5S also seeks to streamline the workflow throughout the production process. By eliminating waste, a lean system eliminates variability in the process itself and in the cycle time of materials. The cycle time is the length of time production materials spend in process, while processing time is the length of time required to process any particular item at any given workstation. By eliminating variability within these two lean concepts, companies become more efficient, and are able to reduce the final costs of producing a customer-demanded quality product. Reducing variability is a core objective of Lean. In fact, variability reduction could be defined as Lean in action. Some of the benefits of reducing variability or practicing lean principles are shorter cycle times, shorter lead times, faster response times to customer demands, lower costs, greater flexibility, higher quality, better customer service, and higher revenue. Certainly, these are all elements of creating a successful company, capable of meeting the changing demands of a highly-competitive marketplace.

The International Society of SixSigma provides the acronym DOTWIMP for recalling the seven wastes associated with Lean:

· Defects : A defect is defined as anything produced through the process that the customer is not satisfied with or is unwilling to pay for. Usually referred to as errors, defects disrupt the production process and require a greater final investment to produce a product for profit. Initially, most defects require less production time to produce than the intended high-quality product. This is because most defects occur because at least some facet of the production process was skipped or missed. In the end, however, defects are cost nightmares for companies. The additional steps they add to the production process are exponential, since most steps in the process are repeated. In addition, the intrinsic costs are immeasurable. Lack of customer confidence, added customer operating costs, and dissatisfaction with the purchased products are all end costs of defects that destroy company profits and longevity in the marketplace.

· Overproduction : Think back to the Ford model of production in the early 1900’s. What value did the hundreds of excess Model T’s create? In essence, they only created greater expenses for the company. Valuable resources were tied up in goods that could not be readily sold. This creates wasted time, labor and resources that could be allocated to other areas, such as customer needs, process improvement, or business growth.

· Transportation : This deals with the movement of raw materials from vendors, to parts through the production process, to the finished goods reaching the end user. Lean seeks to streamline this movement so that unnecessary handling of raw materials, excess movem
ent of parts, and increased steps in the distribution process are eliminated.

· Waiting : One of the major problems with the Ford assembly line approach is that not all steps are in synchronization with each other. One step might require five minutes of labor to complete, while the following step might require only two minutes to complete. Obviously, when this is the case a disruption of movement will occur, and the process will be in a “waiting” mode. Lean works to eliminate or minimize this waiting period by combining some steps and separating others, so that each step is more closely matched to the ones before and after. This reduces the amount of time an employee has to sit idle while being paid.

· Inventory : When Toyota began developing into an automobile manufacturing facility, they were forced to eliminate as many additional costs as possible. One way they did this was to eliminate capital resources sitting unused in their parts warehouse. They realized that if their revenue was tied up into parts that could not be turned around into saleable goods in an efficient manner, then they would most likely not survive as a young company. Instead, they worked closely with their supply partners to receive inventory that was needed to manufacture goods in accordance with customer demand. The goods were then sold more quickly, and greater cash flow was created to purchase the next order of parts from suppliers.

· Motion : Hours and hours of production are wasted seconds. Lean addresses this problem by streamlining the production process at the workstation itself. If a worker takes minutes to find the parts needed to complete their step in the process, Lean finds a way to make the parts more accessible, thereby reducing the minutes to seconds. This might not seem like much of a waste reduction, but consider this model. One worker uses one screw per product in their step in the process. The same worker produces one hundred of these products each workday. The worker must stoop down below the work table each time the screw is needed. This step takes thirty seconds, or 3000 seconds per 100 products. By placing the screw bin in front of the worker at shoulder height, the worker can retrieve the screw with less effort and in only 10 seconds. This motion reduction has saved 2000 seconds per 100 products. When calculating the end cost of this reduction annually, it becomes obvious how reduced motion saves money as well as time. This simple example can save a company as much as 137 production hours over the course of a year. These costs really start to add up when one considers that there are several production steps involved in creating a product for sale. Ergonomically, reducing physical motion decreases cumulative trauma disorders associated with time and expense loss due to injury.

· Processing : This concept can take on several dynamics. It can be simplified to say that any flaw in the process which creates a slowdown in production, a disruption of the process flow, or an increase in needed labor greatly increases a company’s initial investment to create a desired result. This, of course, creates a greater cost, which hinders a company’s ability to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Go Lean or Go Home

Lean is currently a hot topic in most major industries and is coming to an industry near you. Practically every type of industry is currently using Lean: distribution centers, electrical, government agencies, manufacturing, mechanical, office, healthcare, customer service and software and system companies. The current big players in lean manufacturing are Cascade Engineering, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Toyota. The use of lean thinking is being applied to improve competitiveness and accelerate a company’s growth by managers and CEO’s alike. Perhaps, the most interesting aspect of Lean is that it does not stop with upper management. Instead, Lean is a philosophy that embraces the worker who actually produces the product or service being bought and sold. Today the leader in manufacturing is the United States, due at least in part to the implementation of lean principles in so many of our industries.

Other industries have taken notice and are now applying lean principles to compete. Channel 9 billionaire James Packer had this to say about Lean, “New management at Channel 9 has launched a concerted attack on its cost base in order to restore margins through eliminating waste, improving efficiency and lowering programming costs.”

Companies, no matter how big or small, are switching practices over to Lean methods. Many companies that implemented Lean practices such as General Electric and Hewlett Packard cut their overhead operations by 30% or more. Furthermore sales double and they’ve continued to grow at an accelerated rate. Companies have experienced this growth and success without cutting jobs, which seems to have been the primary solution used to cut cost in the past.

With such overwhelming evidence, and such compelling arguments, it would seem reasonable that all companies would embrace Lean concepts. This is not always the case. There are two primary reasons some companies are not implementing Lean. Some companies are simply ignorant to Lean methodology and clearly do not understand what is involved in process improvement. Since they are ignorant of these practices, they tend to use older methods with which they are more comfortable. Lean cannot and will not happen overnight. Converting to a Lean system takes time and effort, and results-driven people want immediate results. The other primary reason companies fail to implement Lean practices is that they see process changes as new investments, which of course equals new cost. They have invested such great sums of time and money in their current process, regardless of inefficiencies, they fail to understand that initial costs of Lean processes is simply an investment for future growth and profit.

Lean manufacturing is not a set of isolated techniques. It is a complete business system. By eliminating inherent wastes, Lean creates a new way of designing, a new way of selling, a new way of producing, and most importantly, a new way of involving all employees in improving processes, product quality, and customer satisfaction.

It should be recognized and remembered that Lean is not a final goal that a company works towards. It is an ever-changing way of thinking to make the company the best it can be at all times. Simply put, Lean 5S is making the customer happy by getting them their product in the fastest way possible with the highest quality possible while making the largest profit possible. There is no better way to succeed in today’s changing business world. Darwin’s idea that it wasn’t the strongest species, but the most adaptable species that were able to survive and thrive in the changing world, is equally applied to business. Companies who are consistently able to adapt to the changing needs of their customers, and companies who are able to meet these changes with the fewest costs while producing the greatest profits are the companies who will continue to succeed. These companies understand that Lean is a process, a journey, not an end state.

Lead them over the River of Jordan to the Promised Land!