Seth’s Blog: Sheepwalking Excellent reading from Seth Godin. If we’re a lean organization, we don’t want a bunch of “Sheepwalkers” hanging around. Seth defines it as: I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to…
Toyota sweats U.S. labor costs Another article about the report that was taken from a Toyota computer, this time focused on Toyota’s concerns about rising labor costs. You might call this healthy level of desire for continuous improvement, always striving…
ARNnet – Dell hires Solectron CEO, forms operations group A frequent theme of mine is that Dell should not be lumped into the category of “Toyota Production System” companies even though many people (including some respected lean gurus) call Dell…
Toyota fears U.S. backlash over gains (Detroit Free Press article) I tend to fall on the side of those who think the “Detroit Three” are indeed scapegoating Toyota and that Detroit’s past and present horrible management mistakes are to blame,…
Economist’s View: Hal Varian: Kaizen, That Continuous Improvement Strategy Here is a good lean piece from an unlikely source: an economist! Hal Varian (via the the “Economist’s View” Blog) writes: Remember when Japanese manufacturing techniques were all the rage? You…
Food for thought: When working with the concept (or practice) of Standardized Work in my lean experience, it’s always been in context of a workplace that was already up and running and had, to some extent, “gotten along fine” without…
By Dan Markovitz Sometimes it’s hard to spot errors in an office, much less error-proof the workspace. With so many value streams running through each knowledge worker, and so much of the value being intangible and invisible, error-proofing is tricky.…
Nissan News | Nissan’s ‘shot in the arm’ for healthcare sector It’s not just Toyota working with the Toyota City hospital or GM helping the University of Michigan hospital… Now Nissan is helping a hospital in the UK: And the…
Business Week Article Here’s a good story about how some doctors offices are trying to reduce backlogs and appointment delays, by adopting lean and operations management methods. As the head of a large primary care department at a Kaiser Permanente…
Tecumseh To Close Wisconsin Plant; 320 Employees To Lose Jobs This is a disappointing article after we normally read such good lean news from the state of Wisconsin . Lean isn’t mentioned one way or another in the case of…
I personally believe that hoshin kanri is generally poorly understood and underrepresented in the lean world. To apply PDCA, the most fundamental improvement practice, to business planning and strategy, which is awfully darn important, seems like it couldn’t be a…
The No-Name Brand Behind the Latest Flat-Panel Price War – New York Times: Another article about the Olevia brand (featured here before), which builds HDTV’s in southern California: “Syntax has lined up three factories in China and Taiwan to assemble…
