Your Lean Year in Review
Happy New Year! As 2006 ends, I hope many of you had a GREAT lean year. Please add your comments about your lean accomplishments for the year, or at least one key lean accomplishment. I was very fortunate to do…
Month December 2006
Waste in Collecting Tolls
TxDOT to motorists: Pay up even if tolls are tiny I’ve heard economists say that tolls roads are a very inefficient way of collecting taxes (you have to build tollbooths and hire people to collect tolls, etc.). Gas taxes, vehicle…
Quality is Free in Healthcare?
Hospital cost, quality are at odds In the manufacturing world, the old “mass production” thinking said there was a tradeoff in cost and quality, that high quality must inherently cost more to produce (due to more inspections, high quality materials,…
IW Webcast: Lean Tools
Here’s an Industry Week webcast that promotes: Six Sigma, Lean, or Kaizen? Using the Right Tool for the Right Problem I hope they will also cover the cultural and management aspects of lean. Lean isn’t just a “tool”, it’s really…
Lean Blog Carnival
Kevin Meyer used to do a lean “blog carnival”, so maybe it’s now my turn. There are many great blogs out there and here’s a highlight of what’s been really good recently. Kevin’s blog had a feature on Whirlpool’s understanding…
Revolutionizing Manufacturing with Software: A Discussion on Lean Principles with Dave Gleditsch – LeanBlog Podcast #14
LeanBlog Podcast #14 is a discussion with Dave Gleditsch, the Chief Technology Officer for Pelion Systems, a leading provider of software for lean manufacturing applications. I first met Dave after I read his Industry Week columns and traded some emails…
Lean Blog Challenge Contest Winner
Here’s the winner of the Lean Blog Challenge Contest. Congratulations to Rich, the winner of an MP3 player pre-loaded with the first 13 episodes of the Podcast. Have advice for Rich? Feel free to post your comments here. Check back…
Lean is not "Mean"
For a lean, mean machine Here’s another journalistically-lazy reference to “lean and mean,” this time in an announcement for an Intro to Lean seminar in Florida. Ugh. Lean is not “mean.” Lean calls for respect for employees and not laying…
Ford’s Mulally meets with Toyota
NY Times: Ford and Toyota Chiefs Met in Tokyo MSNBC: Ford’s Mulally signals co-operation with Toyota In the NY Times today… apparently they fired up Mark Fields’ private jet and flew off to Japan last week to meet with Toyota…
More on Mulally’s First Impressions as the New CEO of Ford Motor
Here’s what jumped out at me from Friday’s WSJ articles on Alan Mulally: his “war room” and his “first impressions.” (both articles require paid WSJ subscriptions, I believe). The free version of the war room article is here. In the…
Mulally’s Early Lean Leadership at Ford
By Dan Markovitz, Markovitz Consulting(Mark’s note… Dan has been a unofficial, yet very welcome, contributor to the blog for a few weeks now. We should see him posting directly soon. But for now, here is a post he sent me…
Error-Proofing Enhances Quality
Society of Manufacturing Engineers Catching up on some old links and articles I never did get around to publishing… here’s a good overview of error proofing (not “fool proofing” or “dummy proofing”) from the SME and their magazine. Please check…
