Lean Q&A
A few of you may know that a couple weeks ago I did a webcast for Industry Week. For those of you attended, thank you for the great comments. As part of it, the sponsor, Infor, asked me to answer…
Year 2007
We Got Gamed (Lab Specimen Batch Sizes)
A somewhat recent experience prompted me to re-read portions of Donald Wheeler’s outstanding book, Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos, with its section on the three ways people can improve a metric or a target (he gives credit to…
NY Times Magazine on Toyota – Part 2
From 0 to 60 to World Domination – New York Times More from Sunday’s long NY Times piece… We’re used to Jeff Liker saying good things about Toyota, but also Bill Gates? “It’s influencing just about every major company in…
WSJ Readers Beating up on GM
Dream Cars: Made-to-Order Line Could Restore Pride in American Autos – WSJ.comThe WSJ published a group of letters critical of GM in response to the article about the head of AutoNation calling on the automakers to “think different” (to borrow…
Eric Christiansen on Being CEO of a Deming Company – LeanBlog Podcast #18
Here is Episode #18 of the LeanBlog Podcast. My guest today is Eric Christiansen, the President of a translation services company, OmniLingua (more can be found here on their philosophy as a company, being a self-described “Deming Company.”) I was…
NY Times Magazine on Toyota — Part 1
From 0 to 60 to World Domination – New York Times From yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, this is a very long, meaty article about Toyota. It’s probably worth breaking this down into multiple posts dedicated to different topics from…
Ford must copy Toyota, which copied Ford
Detroit Free Press Commentary Excellent commentary here from columnist Tom Walsh. He says, in part: GM and Ford butchered the lean-production system in subsequent decades and lost their zeal for rooting out waste. When Toyota and Honda and other carmakers…
Reminded of Tom Peters – Big, Slow, Dopey Companies
GM in early talks to buy Chrysler: source – Yahoo! News I’m reminded of hearing Tom Peters ask once: “What do you expect when one big, slow, dopey company merges with another big, slow, dopey, company??” That’s pretty much the…
Teaching the Toyota Way
The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers – New York Times Here’s a very good article from the NY Times, a few days ago, that talks about Toyota’s relatively new process training worldwide managers in…
Defining Defects
Flawless products no one wants This was sent by my old colleague Darren, a lean guy from Phoenix. He didn’t add any commentary, but here’s mine. The linked article is another one (from syndicated columnist Dale Dauten) that tries to…
"Good Paying Jobs" for Michigan?
Visteon to build local plant Not sure if I understand my home state’s strategy here, as the governor says: “The company’s investment in Highland Park will bring good-paying jobs to the community and strengthen Michigan’s position as the global leader…
Paranoid Dangers of Lean
SurvivalBlog.com Click on the link above if you, ahem, want to read about how “just in time” inventory is jeopardizing us all (warning: major paranoia alert). When I give lectures or do radio interviews, I’m often asked for proof when…
