Paul Pressler’s Fall From The Gap: Saw this in Business Week yesterday: “As part of the supply chain revamping, Pressler also tinkered with the way the Gap brand produced clothing samples. These prototypes had long been made at studios in…
I’m down with the flu (and stuck out of town in a hotel room after an attempted early trip home was canceled due to weather) and not much in a good thinking mode…. so thanks to illness-inspired laziness and the…
medinnovationblog: Systematic Innovation in U.S. Health Care: Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing Method and Its Application to Health Care A post here from the “medinnovationblog” site. The first one, linked above, gives a pretty good overview of applications of the Toyota Production…
Got a question yesterday from Eric Christiansen, my guest for episode #18 of the LeanBlog Podcast. He asked: Can a company be considered a lean company if it does not use some method of statistical process control? I toured a…
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…
Toyota sweats U.S. labor costs Another article about the report that was taken from a Toyota computer, this time focused on Toyota’s concerns about rising labor costs. You might call this healthy level of desire for continuous improvement, always striving…
ARNnet – Dell hires Solectron CEO, forms operations group A frequent theme of mine is that Dell should not be lumped into the category of “Toyota Production System” companies even though many people (including some respected lean gurus) call Dell…
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…
Business Week Article Here’s a good story about how some doctors offices are trying to reduce backlogs and appointment delays, by adopting lean and operations management methods. As the head of a large primary care department at a Kaiser Permanente…
Minot Daily News Before any of the “fake lean” companies out there get any lousy ideas, let’s discuss this. No, I’m not being paranoid, this isn’t keeping me up at night. But, it’s scary / amusing that companies would think…
Quite some time ago, I wrote an article titled Getting Lean Right. I included a quote from someone which I did not have a reference for. I thought it was an important point to share, but I recently got an…