All Posts on Lean Blog

I've been reading a well-known book about entrepreneurship and small business, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.What continually amazes me about the book is that, written in 1995, it…
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MySA.com: Business Here is an article the discusses attempts to get suppliers into the official Toyota supplier park near the San Antonio plant. "It is a special situation indeed that the San Antonio plant will have a supplier park with…
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Slashdot | The Laptop Supply ChainSlashdot.org commentary (with a link to a free WSJ article). The WSJ article discusses the somewhat hidden laptop supply chain. Dell used to do "final assembly" (just a few last components) in Austin or…
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I saw the results of a Harris Interactive online poll, which said only 3.6% of respondents thought "large companies" are "most likely to have good customer service."Why is that people feel that way? From a lean or TQM perspective why…
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iSixSigma Message BoardsInteresting discussion on "real lean vs. fake lean". No, I'm not the "Mark" who started this thread on that board.The professor mentioned in the original post is Bob Emiliani, from the Center for Lean Business…
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The Celestica CEO says:"... he noted benefits from restructuring and lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is a series of initiatives that collectively boost efficiency and is adding about 30 basis points to the company's bottom…
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My company is attempting to define and create a "Company Production System," patterned after TPS. Some of our executives visited TMMK (Toyota Georgetown) and understood the idea that TPS and lean is not just a bunch of tools (like 5S and…
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Standardized Work ChartsHere is the latest posting from Darren Dolcemascolo, who also publishes a lean email newsletter (and does lean consulting, as well)."First of all, "open book" or transparent costing must be in place. That is, the…
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Pelion Systems Advances Demand-Based Manufacturing With Enhanced Real-Time Resource Planning EngineThis is becoming quite the recurring theme (see here, here, and here). Lean lean lean.... put "lean" in front of any type of manufacturing…
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$8M funding boost - 2005-06-06 Another "siren song" of software? For those not following this line of posts, also see this article on i2 and "lean".
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Bovine Growth Hormone:One of the seven /eight forms of waste (per Toyota) is Overproduction. It's frustrating to me that the U.S. government supports overproduction of milk."Today, the United States is already in a state of mass…
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Brownsville HeraldIt's interesting to see and think about the chase for low-cost labor... conventional wisdom is that manufacturers have chased cheap labor to Mexico, now China, now onto Vietname and other "Lower-Cost Countries".... but is…
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USATODAY.com We'll chalk this one up in the "unintended consequences" category. This shows how tough it can be for governments to restrict trade. The article says, in part: To escape new limits on shipments to the USA of cotton shirts,…
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Wall St. Journal via Pittsburgh Post Gazette Wow, here's a messed up Value Stream. Book publishers end up taking back and destroying (or heavily discounting) 34% of all books sent to chains like Barnes and Noble because of poor…
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Toyota Has Most Efficient Plant in N.A., Harbour Report Says:Click "comments" to see my thoughts and possibly add your own.""'Toyota's labor productivity lead equates to a $350 to $500 per vehicle cost advantage relative to domestic…
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IndustryWeek : Under Pressure:This ties directly to the Toyota article from the other day and the concept of Profit = Price - Cost. The Industry Week cover story focuses on companies who work hard to mitigate cost increases without relying…
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My-ESM - The Lean Journey:It's nice to see lean being driven from the CEO level at this former IBM business unit."What Celestica found was religion, of sorts. It began a journey of continuous improvement, a pilgrimage in which Lean-the…
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IndustryWeek This article doesn't focus on lean, really, but it's hard to ignore such a major company like GM.Please check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, Mark…
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