All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
GM Got Gamed (Or, How to Fudge Your Production Numbers to Keep the Boss Happy) TL;DR: At a GM engine plant, fear-based leadership pushed supervisors to falsify production data to avoid punishment. The numbers looked good, but real problems stayed…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
