Good read. I agree on the key points you highlighted.

We have found that machine set up time is incredibly important. We worked with one company a while back that could not achieve low quantities simply because their machine set up time was extremely high. As such, their solution was to increase the quantity of products produced when the machine finally was ready to use. This is similar to the analogy of a channel of water with big rocks at the bottom of the channel. The small business owner sees the solution as an increase of water flow, thus making the rocks disappear beneath the flow of water (even though they are still there). The lean solution is to make the rocks disappear altogether, so that no matter how little or how much water is flowing, the rocks are no longer seen.

This is typical for many small businesses. Instead of fixing the core problem they look to simply work around it.

Cheers