As I promised, I am going to continue to over-play the afternoon my team spent with Steven Spear. In his forthcoming book “ Chasing the Rabbit” (to be published in the fall), he profiles what is different about those companies which seem to easily be increasing their lead against competitors when there is no apparent [...]
The last post got way too long, and I wanted to get it out there. But of course, there are afterthoughts. At a level higher than simple process chaos, overburden hits the entire organization when perceived demand is significantly greater than perceived capacity. As I noted in the earlier post, segregating what should be routine [...]
Corrie van den Hoek, a regular reader and correspondent from The Netherlands, is working on applying kaizen in the health care industry. She left a comment on ‘The White Board’ asking my thoughts on the concepts of mura and muri in the health care field. I think it is first important to define the terms [...]
Jim Collins book “ Good to Great” has been a best selling business book for several years. But I am not so sure everyone knows about Jim Collins web site. It as on-line mini-lectures, and much more material that reinforces the concepts outlined in the book. As for how the concepts in the book relate [...]
Steven Spear told an interesting story in our session with him. A Toyota sensei, very senior, was looking at a process unlike anything in his previous experience base. The researchers watching expected him to do “analysis by analogy” – to take what he observed, find a matching analogy in his deep experience, and then draw [...]
Toyota falls short of GM in global sales – Yahoo News This news article is interesting, because it totally misses the point. First, in the fine print, Toyota fell short of GM, yes, by about 3,000 total cars out of about 9.3 million cars. So, in my book, that is a tie because +/- a [...]
As you may have noticed, there is a new look. This is the result of finally getting around to upgrading WordPress, and the unintended consequence that the new version “broke” the theme I was using. So I finally found another theme (which is easier than rolling my own or dissecting someone else’s code to figure [...]
A little over a month ago I had an opportunity to spend about 4 hours in a small-group session with Steven Spear. For those readers who don’t already know, Steve is a researcher and practitioner who has made his name in understanding the Toyota Production System as Toyota actually does it. He first came to [...]
On the surface, a “two bin system” seems a great, simple solution to a part resupply process that could otherwise get complex. And, on the surface, I don’t argue with that. But two-bin has some limitations. And because it is so simple to set up, those limitations are frequently not understood or taken into account. [...]