Article Link By Mark Edmondson Do you experience lumpy product demand? Do you suffer from “outsourced manufacturing and third-party logistics across a multi-enterprise network”? Has “demand management, transaction processing, and order fulfillment using paper-based systems led to excessive amounts of…
By Mark Edmondson Bill Waddell’s post on Evolving Excellence makes a humorous yet tragic point about how lean is too often confused with outsourcing. Prepare to laugh out loud and cry. Real story: This year our team visited an $800…
By Mark Edmondson Today I went to the local post office to buy holiday stamps and Priority Mail boxes. (An aside: Priority Mail for gift parcels is a great deal – you can cram as much stuff as possible into…
From Mark Edmondson: Peter F. Drucker passed away on November 11, eight days before his 96th birthday. Since he was a professor at Claremont Graduate University while I attended neighboring Claremont McKenna College in the late 1970s, I had the…
Just as your product value streams require brilliant processes to deliver value, your management team also requires a brilliant management process to lead effectively. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your management process: Quick, where does your team…
In his article “Putting Six Sigma in Perspective”[1], Michael Hammer uses the mantra:”Use the right tool for the right problem”. An excerpt that summarizes what he means (he uses the term “process redesign”, which in this context is synonymous with…
Our consulting firm has two HR requirements before we’ll work with a client: 1. No regular employee will lose their job as a result of improvement activities. 2. No “forced ranking”. This means that there is no ongoing practice for…
