I was watching a show (via Tivo, back over the weekend) that I just discovered on the National Geographic Channel — Ultimate Factories, their episode on fire truck manufacturing at Pierce Manufacturing. It’s a cool show for HD also. I…
At a Small Ohio Factory, Leather and Laces Mesh – New York Times It’s not a Lean story, per se, but it’s always nice to read about an American factory. The N.F.L. is the only major sports league whose balls…
Sometimes these stories come across the wire in batches, there’s a flurry of positive Lean news this week: Pierce ablaze with orders Here’ s a story about “lean fire trucks” (and a horrible pun in the newspaper’s headline there, don’t…
Juggling act sets up rink Even though I’m still a pretty die hard Red Wings fan, I live in Stars country now. Don’t ask me what I’ll do if the Wings and Stars meet in the second round. I went…
Andrew Castle, a lean healthcare consultant in the UK, generously offered up this summary of the 4-part PBS documentary series. It’s a long summary, so I’ll just post the start of it here. Direct pdf file download Buy the series…
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…
A tale of two factories – FORTUNE Here is an interesting piece from the latest FORTUNE magazine. The reporter visited two Tenneco Automotive plants that both make mufflers — one in Litchfield, Michigan (my home state) and one in China.…
Question for the blog readers: Who are the great lean companies? Don’t give me a list of Shingo Prize winners. Don’t tell us who has done a lot of lean stuff or who has used lean practices here and there,…
Here is Part 2 of my interview with Roger Simmermaker, author of the book “How to Buy American.” Part 1 can be found here. Roger Simmermaker is the author of “How Americans Can Buy American: The Power of Consumer Patriotism.”…
It took a while, but here is Part 1 of my interview with Roger Simmermaker, author of the book “How to Buy American.” Roger Simmermaker is the author of “How Americans Can Buy American: The Power of Consumer Patriotism.” He…
If you read the post below and the article from PC Magazine, you might have seen this quote: “The thing with computers and electronics is that people have the feeling that it’s basically impossible to buy things that were made…
News From PC Magazine: Can You Really Buy An American PC? Yes you can, it depends on what you mean by “American.” Dell has always built desktop PC’s and servers here in the U.S. By “built”, I mean “assembled”, as…