Article Link –> Chicago Tribune | After Sox victory, firms go to work I’m in Chicago and saw this in the Trib. The World Series shirts are printed immediately after the winner is determined, which eliminates the waste of printing…
NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator?NUMMI Tour Tale #2: The Power of Reynolds WrapNUMMI Tour Tale #3: The Power of Why Back to stories about my tour of the Toyota/GM plant in Fremont CA. The NUMMI lobby has…
In search of a mid afternoon coffee fix on Friday afternoon I came across this cup lid and couldn’t help but be impressed with the number of Lean features that make up the design. The obvious feature is it’s use…
NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator?NUMMI Tour Tale #2: The Power of Reynolds Wrap I think, by now, that Toyota is pretty famous for its “5 Whys” approach for root cause problem solving. Asking why five times, in…
Article Link –> “Asian vehicles rank low in survey” Or do they? You can’t accuse the media for being biased toward Toyota in this case. It is the Detroit Free Press, after all, though. The headline clearly doesn’t match the…
By Luke Van Dongen: This link is to an article in today’s Detroit News. I’ve been hearing reactions to this article all day – it really seems to have struck a nerve with people. I’m not sure exactly how I…
The blog has now had 10,000 visitors since the launch in March. October is the 8th straight month of increasing visits. That’s definitely an statistically significant upward trend that passes the SPC “Shewhart Rules” test. Thanks Professor Deming. I have…
NUMMI Tour Tale #1: Why Fix the Escalator? The NUMMI tour guide told an interesting kaizen story as we went past the body weld area. Car bodies are held and transported on metal carrier racks that recirculate through the welding…
Auto Week This article eventually reaches the conclusion I jumped to early on. Of course Toyota doesn’t outsource as much as the other automakers. Toyota’s own internal production can be cheaper and with better quality, I assume, than their suppliers.…
I really enjoyed my tour of the NUMMI plant last Friday. I’ll post my summary thoughts and impressions from the tour, but I wanted to post a few of the more interesting stories first. In a back part of the…
Below is a link to Knowledge at Wharton article. Yes, it’s one more about the current plight of the US auto industry, but I found it to have an interesting tie to previous discussions in this forum around Lean Consumption.…
Guardian Unlimited Money | Work | So this is a problem in the UK? The U.S. has enough factors deterring kids from engineering and factory careers without TV shows making factory life look “boring, dirty and smelly”. “A survey of…
