Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One In this Business Week piece about Toyota’s fear of a backlash against them, with their continued success, there was this tidbit I found interesting: “That same year [as NUMMI opened], a Ron…
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…
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…
A few weeks back, the British media was having a field day with reports of and complaints about what sounds like a horribly misguided “office lean” effort at a British government office. Read more about it. The picture below is…
Business Week Article OK, so here’s the palette cleanser after my Bob Nardelli rant. I like to keep a positive piece at the top of blog for good blog karma. It’s a companion piece about another guy who was passed…
Mulally Pans `Paranoid’ Ford, Pushes Toyota-Style Production I criticized Alan Mulally earlier, via my criticism of Boeing. To be clear: I respect Mulally. I am really rooting for Alan Mulally. Mulally is such an outspoken promoter of the Toyota Production…
I saw this at a hospital lab last year, a great example of true error proofing vs. just putting up warning signs. “Cautions” and “Warnings” are lazy engineering, in general, with product design. Signs are not good problem-solving in any…
A few articles in the news today about bad bosses. Hopefully, more than a few have 2007 resolutions to get better. Chances are though, the bad bosses think they are great. If your boss has resolutions for becoming a better…
As Auto Prosperity Shifts South, Two Towns Offer a Study in Contrasts – New York Times Here’s a free Detroit News version of the article. My hometown, Livonia, Michigan is hurting with the prolonged slump in the auto industry. I…
Lean was on my brain traveling home yesterday. Mostly bad examples, but one thing jumped out at me, somewhat positive. I love the TPS notion of “explaining why” (and blogged about it here after touring NUMMI). In the Lean and…
I received an email newsletter from APICS the other day, an email I question the central premise of. The email headline says: “A Lean GM?” At least they put that in quotes. Maybe sometimes an editor does that to not…
WSJ.com – Ford and Chrysler Show Dark Outlook For U.S. Car Makers I received an email from a blog reader, Jack, from Tampa FL. I assume he’s from outside the auto industry and he wrote: In light of Mr. Womack’s…
