Looking for help from Chicago-area lean folks…. I was contacted by a Quality Manager at a pretty small, privately-held manufacturing company in the Chicago suburbs. they are considering launching into lean and they’d like to talk to or visit with…
Frustration Grows at Carousel as More Baggage Goes AstrayW. Edwards Deming is famous (but not famous enough) for pointing out that most errors are the fault of the system and that the system is ultimately management’s responsibility, not the individual…
Mulally: Ford needs to become one global company – 11/10/06 – The Detroit News Online: Isn’t it funny how it takes an outsider to come in to point out the obvious? New Ford CEO Alan Mulally: “‘The best in the…
Materials costs force GM to raise prices Yet another example of a non-lean mindset company thinking they are entitled to price increases because costs went up. General Motors Corp. has raised prices an average of 0.5 percent on about one-third…
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #9 is a discussion with David Mann, the author of the excellent book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions. In this episode, we will talk about Steelcase’s experience with their lean efforts and the…
Few Hands, Many Hours – WSJ.com Sorry for the delay in getting to Part 3 in the WSJ series that I like to call, “Hey, We Still Build Stuff Here?” Here are links for parts one and two. Part 3…
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…
Home of the Range – WSJ.com Part 2 of the WSJ series (Part 1 here) focuses on Viking, the high-end cooktop and grill manufacturer, based in Greenwood Mississippi. I’m glad that the WSJ is focusing on U.S. manufacturing, but the…
Still Built on the Homefront – WSJ.com ($$$) The Wall St. Journal surprised me — today is the start of a 4-part series about manufacturing, “Still Made in The U.S.A.” Today’s feature is Bobcat, which has 1300 employees in little…
The Connecticut Post Online – Shelton firm shows off streamlining: Here’s another story about a small private manufacturing company, Electri-Cable Assemblies, and their lean success. It seems like all I’m able to feature here is small companies. The larger Fortune…
First, if you’ve read The Hitchhiker ‘s Guide to Lean, you will know that we believe the entire concept of deeply understanding our current state is a vital skill and principle to drive performance improvement. I recently penned an article…
I had to buy a new router for home (a different quality discussion about why my old one quit working after a year). I noticed an error proofing (poka yoke) device on the back of the router (the orange strip…