Updated 11/17/08 10 PM central If you have WSJ access, check out today’s article “Stores Count Seconds to Trim Labor Costs”. I thought, oh no punitive Taylorism… And sure enough they reference Taylor. Be sure to see the end of…
Retailers Reprogram Workers In Efficiency Push – WSJ.com This is more of a Deming philosophy article than a “Lean article” since the retailer in question here doesn’t say they’re using Lean…. which is good, since the situation described in the…
Sir Terry Leahy: The ‘Robert Mugabe of retail’ bites back – People, News – The Independent First off, that’s a pretty nasty nickname, being called the Robert Mugabe of anything. I don’t know the whole history on that one, but…
Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers – WSJ.com This article caught my eye, this idea that someone other than top executives might actually have some ideas. In “Followership,” a book being published this winter, Ms. Kellerman argues that a big…
Big Boxes Aim to Speed Up Shopping (WSJ) No, this isn’t about waste in packaging (I saw how the UK is pushing milk in plastic bags that you put into a reusable plastic jug at home, 75% less landfill space).…
Circuit City’s harsh layoffs give glimpse of a new world First off, Circuit City is not a “Lean” company. So when people ask “is Lean always good for employees?,” you can also ask “when is traditional management always good for…
Business Week: Out At Home Depot As more details about the former Home Depot “leader” and his “leadership” come out, it’s a sad case study of bad leadership (written about earlier, at risk of being accused of Shadenfreude). Why am…
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…
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…
An email from a friend, he and his company will remain anonymous. “OK so it’s confession time. I’ve been reading your Blog fairly regularly here at work. We dabble in lean stuff here. Generally it’s frustrating reading an expert opinion…
