In a short, but interesting, thread on
lean.org, Emma asks an interesting question: “Can an IT system support Lean?” She goes on to point out a general trend she has seen where the “kaizen guys” offer a lot of resistance to the introduction of sophisticated I.T. systems.
“Lean” stuff aside, I offer this recent post on [...]
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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 to “lean [...]
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 the [...]
Monday, November 26, 2007
If I were to look at the experience of the organization profiled in the last three posts “A Systematic Approach to Part Shortages” I believe their biggest breakthrough was cultural. By applying the “morning market” as a process of managing problems, they began a shift from a reactive organization to a problem solving culture.
I can [...]
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The third element of this organization’s successful drive to eliminate part shortages was a systematic approach to problem solving. They made it a process, managed just like any other process, rather than something people did when they had time. Even though this is “Part 3″ of this series, in reality they put this into [...]
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I re-read my “What Nukes?” post and realized I was really rambling. I want to reiterate a key point more clearly because I think it is important.
In the “Bad Apple” theory there is an implied assumption that the cause of an accident or other problem was one person who, at that moment in time, was [...]
Those of you who are familiar with Shingijutsu’s materials and teaching (or at least familiar with Nakao-san’s version of things) have heard of “The Seven Flows.” As a brief overview for everyone else, the original version, and my interpretations are:
The flow of people.
The flow of information.
The flow of raw materials (incoming materials).
The flow of sub-assemblies [...]
Warning to Reader: This piece has a lot of free-association flow to it!
Oops. A few weeks ago a story emerged in the press that a B-52 had flown from North Dakota to Louisiana with half-a-dozen nuclear armed missiles under its wing. The aircrew thought they were transporting disarmed missiles. This is a rather major oh-oh [...]
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
One very good idea-creation tool is “inverting the problem” - developing ideas on how to cause the effect you are trying to prevent. This is a common approach for developing mistake-proofing, but I just saw a great use of the idea for general teaching.
Ask “How could we make this operation take as long as possible?” [...]
This
article by Anita Tucker and Amy Edmondson at Harvard highlights a problem that is as common on the manufacturing floor as it is in the hospitals they studied:
When people encounter a problem that stops their work, they work the system, get what they need, and continue their work.
A lot of people call this initiative, [...]