Kent Blumberg: The Gemba – what it is and why leaders should care Kent, a reader of and sometimes commenter on this blog, found a blog (“The Corporate Cynic”) that made a wild and uninformed attack on the Toyota Production…
WSJ.com – Made in USA? Now, Customers Get to Choose Back when the Chinese iPod factory was in the news (prison or not?), I asked if people would be willing to pay more for an American made iPod, you know,…
“Starbucks’ Sales Slide on Frozen Drinks” Starbucks is blaming operational problems for their sales slide (actually, it’s just the rate of sales increase that fell, from 7% to 4% – let’s ignore the faulty Wall Street math that views a…
Order via Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Order via Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) Order through the GBMP I received a copy of this DVD through work and just watched it this afternoon. I plan on using it next week to…
iPod City: Apple criticized for factory conditions There was a fairly shocking story in the Sunday Mail, a London newspaper, about the iPod factory conditions in China. The full text of the article isn’t available online, but I was able…
I know we have a winner in our May contest (or, see below). I was up at 3:30 AM yesterday to go do some lean work at a hospital. I borrowed a lean trick that my wife, a former road-warrior…
I saw a perfect illustration this morning of how unnecessary handoffs in a process can lead to errors. I visited a local coffee shop in Albuquerque and ordered a cup of coffee from the woman working the register. I asked…
WSJ.com – Dunkin’ Donuts Tries to Go Upscale, But Not Too Far I haven’t seen one of these first hand, but the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts has experimented with triple-branded restaurant buildings (a move they are backing down from).…
I’m not anti-Wal-Mart, anti-Starbucks or anything like that. I think people should be free to compete in a fair market, and if Starbucks brews a better pot than Bob’s Coffee Shack, then Bob should either get better or close. But…
Seth’s Blog: Waiting in line Another thought provoking post from Seth Godin. Although he doesn’t write about lean, think about the examples he gives: Lack of “order taking” capacity (in two examples), leads to lost revenue (and/or the wasting of…
WSJ.com – As Airlines Pull Out of Dive, United Charts Its Own Course ($$ Subscription) Most of what we hear about airlines is “low cost” this or “cutting costs” that. Everyone is chasing Southwest’s low labor costs or copying them…
On the right hand column, I’ve had a “favorite posts” link for some the articles and blog postings that I like the best. I’ll update this with my favorite posts of last quarter. Toyota Bucks Trend by NOT Outsourcing Bad…
