Things not specifically about lean manufacturing.
The idea of a continuous improvement culture, a problem solving culture, a kaizen culture, has been with us for decades. Ultimately it is what everyone says they want to create. Yet creating that culture remains elusive for all but a few. I have noticed that, generally, when people describe the culture they are trying to [...]
I have come to expect very little from most airlines, especially for the parts of the “service” that doesn’t involve actually sitting in the airplane. Still, some airlines make their policies more clear than others. Alaska Air, for example, is explicitly clear that I can hold a reservation for 24 hours and cancel with no [...]
Toyota to end Calif. joint venture with GM – Yahoo! News. The joint venture was developed to have American workers learn Toyota’s production methods, which were much leaner and more efficient. [emphasis added] Maybe that was GM’s intention – to “fix” the workforce. This fits in with the judgment I developed about GM’s leadership over [...]
Toyota says it may shut Fremont’s NUMMI auto plant – San Jose Mercury News Part of the aftermath of GM’s implosion is that Toyota is left holding the bag on the NUMMI joint venture. The plant primarily built vehicles for GM (the Pontiac Vibe), but was essentially managed by Toyota as a Toyota operation. A [...]
I am going to break my self-imposed rule against further comment on the automotive industry in general, even though it is more commentary about current events than it has to do with the Toyota Production System. In physics, a black hole is a singularity – a point where time and space are collapsed to a [...]
Staight left an interesting post on The Whiteboard a couple of days ago: You’ve discussed 5S but Novaces, for example, has a 6S system. I think it would be great if you talked about different consultant companies and their processes. Novaces, it turns out, is a consultancy apparently based out of New Orleans. In the [...]
Murdoch says papers should charge on Web – Yahoo! News Robert Murdoch believes that newspapers will have to start charging people for access to their online editions. That’s well and good, so long as the laws of demand and supply balance at a point where that works. But so far, that isn’t working. In today’s [...]
Steven Spear has an interview on the concepts in his book Chasing the Rabbit on Business Week. He describes leadership very similar to Jim Collins‘ model in Good to Great Spear also has a blog / website at http://chasingtherabbitbook.com
It is summed up in this statement on my wordpress dashboard: Akismet has caught 10,020 spam for you since you first installed it. This contrasts with the 167 comments (including mine) that have been left by actual, thinking people. If I were running metrics, I would look at the ratio of 167/10,020 and see 0.0166, [...]
We have created an entire generation (or two) of managers who are very savvy with cost accounting models. They know exactly how “costs” and “profits” are calculated, and they know exactly what inputs to manipulate in order to make the numbers as good as possible. They know, for example, how “inventory turns” are calculated, that [...]