LeanBlog Podcast #28 features our friend and frequent guest, Norman Bodek, noted lean author, consultant, and President of PCS Press. This also celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Podcast, which featured Norman as our first guest. As I've given him credit for previously, the Podcast really was Norman's idea when he said I should do “radio interviews” with him. Thankfully, this has turned into a series of interviews with others that I have enjoyed immensely. I hope you enjoy them as well.
If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page.
Keywords and Main Points, Episode #28
- Summary of Norman's talk at the TWI Summit and the “pledge of continuous improvement.”
- Gantt's book “Organizing Work” (via Google Books) — the stakeholder groups that a business must serve (including community)
- Lifetime employment and the obligation for good management
- Can you have a workplace with no bosses? Example of a Skippy peanut butter plant
- Is the ultimate goal automation? Norman's thoughts on that
- Managers' resistance to change as a separate type of waste?
- Being on the floor all the time as a manager
- Norman talking about “conscious learning” (his next book)
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Awesome interview! I love the piece about Toyota telling people (managers?) to at least not be an obstacle to change.
-J
If it is true that “Toyota’s main goals is to reduce the labor content – in essence they would love to have a fully automated factory” as Norman Bodek mentioned in PODCAST # 28 , it would be important to comment on the conclusion that the “high-tech approach was pioneered at Toyota’s Tahara plan. Due to the breakdown, high maintenance costs ,heavy investments and troublesome acceptance by assembly workers, this strategy was quickly abandoned” as Mentioned the “Changes in Toyota Motors’ operations management ” article by Jos Benders and Masaya Morita.
I got a question about getting more info socio-technical systems and here are some links, courtesy of Norm:
Wikipedia
Google search link
Strategos Article
Link – read Lou Davis’s article