Thanks to Pete for findng this and sending it my way. This link takes you to an animation thats apparently produced for Toyota Sweden. Here is the animation with English subtitles (you can view this with or without sound). The…
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…
Lots of Toyota news with the new Tundra and the Detroit Auto Show going on:Toyota Enters the Auto Show With a Swagger (NY Times)From the article: No longer does Toyota fear the reaction it faced as recently as the 1990s,…
USA’s only breast implant factory adjusts to silicone approval (USA Today) First off, shame on the journalist for using the “everything is bigger in Texas” cliche in her story. About my headline… yes, that’s not referenced in the USA Today,…
Forbes Article on Wal-Mart Here is a decidedly pro-Wal-Mart article (“the fair and balanced Lean Blog”) in a follow up to this post about Wal-Mart’s new employee scheduling practices. Forbes points out that Lowes and Target also use this type…
Here is a response to the Lean Challenge contest entry (click here to read the situation submitted by Rich, a blog reader). Click on the “Contest” link at the bottom of this post to see more responses. If you have…
TL;DR: Matching staffing to customer demand can make sense from a Lean perspective — but when scheduling systems create unpredictable hours and treat workers as variable costs, they undermine respect for people and ultimately harm both employees and customers. Wal-Mart…
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…
Kevin Meyer used to do a lean “blog carnival”, so maybe it’s now my turn. There are many great blogs out there and here’s a highlight of what’s been really good recently. Kevin’s blog had a feature on Whirlpool’s understanding…
NY Times: Ford and Toyota Chiefs Met in Tokyo MSNBC: Ford’s Mulally signals co-operation with Toyota In the NY Times today… apparently they fired up Mark Fields’ private jet and flew off to Japan last week to meet with Toyota…
Here’s what jumped out at me from Friday’s WSJ articles on Alan Mulally: his “war room” and his “first impressions.” (both articles require paid WSJ subscriptions, I believe). The free version of the war room article is here. In the…
By Dan Markovitz, Markovitz Consulting(Mark’s note… Dan has been a unofficial, yet very welcome, contributor to the blog for a few weeks now. We should see him posting directly soon. But for now, here is a post he sent me…