Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
November 29, 2005

Firefox 1.5 and Rollyo

The new Firefox 1.5 web browser is available. It is a great browser I have been using for at least a year. It is free, secure and has great features.

You can also try a search “roll” I have setup for the various curiouscat.com sites (via Rollyo). This allows you to search those sites I have included in the “roll” and only those sites.

I have also setup a management “roll” which includes some of my favorite management sites. This is a great tool that lets you search a predefined list of sites (including blogs). You can also setup your own “rolls.” I think this is a very nice feature, let me know what you think.

You can add these search rolls to your Firefox search box (so you can select to search using Google, Yahoo… or one of these search rolls).

Also, if you have not looked at Open Office yet, take a look at it also (previous post: OpenOffice 2.0). We also have a page with some of the freeware we think is worthwhile.

Toyota Production System in Indiana


Photo by Daniel R. Patmore

Via Evolving Excellence, Indiana plant president passes on lessons:

Q. Is it different teaching the Toyota Production System to American team members than it is to teach it to Japanese?

A. It’s not so different. Americans are eager to learn. American team members are more serious about job security, so their motivation is higher than that of the Japanese.

The Japanese are more obedient to the boss. Americans show more individual initiative. Once they understand why we have to continue kaizen, we get a much better result than you’d expect.

Q. What are the biggest misconceptions about the Toyota Production System?

A. Sometimes it’s misunderstood as a management tool to bring cost down. Or that it’s effective even if only a portion of TPS is introduced, such as kanban. (Kanban is inventory replenishment.) That’s not the Toyota Production System.

Kanban is easy to introduce as a logistics system, but its purpose is not to reduce logistics costs. It’s a tool to bring problems to the surface. Not many people understand that. As we reduce inventory, all problems come to the surface, and that way you solve problems and your system gets stronger.

November 28, 2005

Toyota Manufacturing Powerhouse

Great required reading via Evolving Excellence, Relentless, Detroit News:

As Toyota expands rapidly, it is also grappling with a shortage of skilled managers and engineers. When it decided in June to build its seventh North American assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario, officials said one reason they chose that site was because the new factory could be overseen by the team running its nearby Cambridge plant.

Last month, the normally acquisition-shy Toyota bought nearly half of GM’s 20 percent stake in Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., in part to bolster its ranks of researchers and engineers.

Now, some Toyota executives in fast-growing regions are coaxing former managers out of retirement. Less than a year after Ed Ohlin retired, the 21-year company veteran and former head of its Mexican sales operations is back on the payroll, helping his former boss Yoshimi Inaba build a sales network in China.

“He was looking for someone who understood the Toyota culture and had brought it to another country. I’d done that,” said Ohlin, who now works in Beijing

(more…)

Toyota Chairman Comments on India and Thailand

Toyota Chief Comments on India, Thai Cos.

The chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that auto companies in India and Thailand may soon overtake those in Japan because of their increasing focus on quality.

While this might be a bit of an exaggeration part of what keeps Toyota improving is that they do not rest on their past success. They are continually looking to improve.

He said no Japanese firm has won the Deming prize in recent years as they are not showing interest in winning this coveted prize, whereas Indian companies such as motorcycle and scooter maker, TVS Motor Co. and Rane TRW Steering Systems Ltd. have won the Deming prize.

More news on Okuda Hiroshi’s visit to India, Japan sees India shining

Toyota Motor Corporation chairman Okuda Hiroshi, who heads Japanese trade body Nippon Keidanren, will lead a high-powered mission to India from November 27-30.

The delegation is likely to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, finance minister P Chidambaram and commerce minister Kamal Nath.

Related Posts:

November 27, 2005

Management Improvement

Lean Manufacturing Visionary Jim Womack On Frontiers Of Lean Thinking, webcast and additional questions and answers:

Question: For a firm seeking to improve — what comes first? Six Sigma quality or lean implementation?

James Womack: Agh! These are all the same thing. You need to start with the value stream for very product, draw a map of its current state, and ask about each step: Is it valuable? Is it capable? Is it available? Is it adequate? Is it flexible? Then ask whether each step flows smoothly to the next but only at the pull of the customer as the process approaches perfection. Doing this simple exercise wraps together everything you need to know about TQM, TPM, TPS, Six Sigma, TOC, etc

I believe while they are similar to varying degree they are not the same thing. They may have similar goals - they are largely focused at improving performance of the organization (but even how they would measure success is different). And when implemented well each of these methods have value. However what is done in an organization focused on six sigma is different than one focused on lean thinking.
(more…)

Not the End of Process

The End of Process by Ross Mayfield

If a knowledge worker has the organization’s information in a social context at their finger tips, and the organization is sufficiently connected to tap experts and form groups instantly to resolve exceptions — is there a role for business process as we know it?

Yes. There are some interesting comments spurring by this post but essentially I think the post is in no way a compelling argument that process management is not a very good management practice.
(more…)

November 25, 2005

Google: Experiment Quickly and Often

Google Thinks Small by Quentin Hardy, Forbes:

Brin and Page have created a corporate organism that tackles most big projects in small, tightly focused teams, setting them up in an instant and breaking them down weeks later without remorse. “Their view is that there is much greater progress if you have many small teams going out at once,” Schmidt says. The mission overall: to collect “all the world’s information” and make it accessible to everyone. “It’s a cause.”
…
Hundreds of projects go on at the same time. Most teams throw out new software in six weeks or less and look at how users respond hours later.

Google has advantages in making this work for them (it is easy to find reasons it won’t work elsewhere). However, this is basically piloting changes on a small scale, analyzing the results and doing that quickly and often. That quick, frequent experimentation is something organizations should strive to achieve.
(more…)

ToC Conference Recap

Thoughts on TOCICO by David Anderson:

“Subordination happens first!” In the 5 focusing steps, the third step is to subordinate the rest of the system to the decision made in step 2 to fully exploit the capacity constrained resource. I had observed in my work with the XIT Sustained Engineering group (the subject of my paper for the conference), that the subordination actions always had to happen first before the constraint could be fully exploited. However, this is counter-intuitive given the order of the steps. As Eli reminded the audience, step 2 is “Decide what (and how) to exploit.” This then leads to a set of subordination decisions which make exploitation possible. Subordination always happens first.

Related Posts:

November 24, 2005

2005 Baldrige Award

The 2005 Baldrige Award recipients are:

November 23, 2005

Lean Forest Products

On The Move NRRI Forest Products promotes ‘lean’ manufacturing processes by Chuck Watson:

“Since U.S. furniture manufacturers typically had lead times greater than four to eight weeks, China could build and ship products to the U.S. within that same timeframe, for less cost.”
…
His project team focuses on wood materials innovation and manufacturing, improvement in this vital industry, employing the lean manufacturing model initiated by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota)
…
A one-week “Kaizen Blitz” (overhaul) restructured the entire facility, he said. “We reduced the amount of floor space necessary by restructuring, retooling and discovering more efficient use of space,” Benson said. “It changed the way we thought about our business.”

Carnival of Lean Leadership #3

Carnival of Lean Leadership #3 from Evolving Excellence once again does a great job of collection links to posts worth reading, including:

  • A big welcome to Norman Bodek, who has started his own blog, Kaikaku. Norman is well known for his Shingo Prize winning books. His first post is on Kaikaku and Kaizen as the “twin sisters” that can drive world class competitiveness.
  • Six Sigma Blog adds to the holiday cheer with a post on “Thanksgiving Design of Experiments“… what is the most effective way to pop your popcorn?
  • Curious Cat has a similarly themed post on productivity improvement from R&D and innovation.
  • Slacker Manager has a post on “the Drucker paradox“… why are his ideas so widely read but so rarely practiced?

Each of the lean carnivals offer some great posts and reinforce the idea that there are great ideas being shared online. I also find it interesting how well represented lean manufacturing and lean thinking are. In the lean carnival that is not surprising but in the worthwhile management information online I have long been frustrated with how little good management improvement information was online.

The influence of the lean blogs in the last year has been remarkable. Prior to that there really was a small set of sites that provided excellent content and they often were lacking in various ways. The Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement (which my father, Bill Hunter, co-founded with George Box - so I am biased) has great reports but the site itself is not good.
(more…)

November 22, 2005

Be Thankful for Lean Thinking

Topics: Management Improvement and Economics

The Dallas Federal Reserve white paper, Supply Chain Management: The Science of Better, Faster, Cheaper by Thomas F. Siems provides a macroeconmic view of what to be thankful due to the practice of lean thinking:

Through better information engineering, supply chain improvements have resulted in a reduced bullwhip effect, lower inventory levels, reduced logistics costs, and streamlined payments. These improvements appear to have helped produce macroeconomic benefits such as more stable economic output and higher productivity growth.

(more…)

November 21, 2005

Performance Transformation

Six steps to success - How to drive performance transformation by Gautam Kumra (India):

Other companies encourage “lean” thinking, which began as an automotive-inspired and assembly-oriented methodology but which today is as established in many financial processes, service industries and parts of the public sector. “Lean” projects depend not just on rolling out new techniques but on changing basic ways of working.
November 20, 2005

Innovation and Research and Development

Innovation and R&D by John Hagel:

From a competitive viewpoint, what matters is the relative rate of productivity improvement. R&D spending and patent filings will matter little if they do not translate into faster productivity improvement -– in fact, they can be a significant distraction. Those who understand this will have a significant edge as competition intensifies in the global economy.

I would argue innovation can be related to productivity improvement or it can be completely unrelated. A company could innovate with an ideas like the remote control for televisions (or microlending or air bags). That innovation may not contribute in any way to manufacturing televisions more productively.
(more…)

Process Leadership

Process Leadership by Daniel T Jones:

the most promising approach is to create a small team, led by a high potential executive, operating initially outside the normal departmental structure and reporting to the top. They must be free to challenge the conventional wisdom, the firm’s current assets and relationships. Their job is to evaluate the core value creating processes of the organisation from the standpoint of the customer, and to work out how to flow value to the customer smoothly and with minimum effort.

More lean thinking articles

The Economist on Drucker

Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit:

He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector - —partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers.
The biggest problem with evaluating Mr Drucker’s influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom “in other words, that he is the victim of his own success. His writings on the importance of knowledge workers and empowerment may sound a little banal today.

I look forward to the day when this next idea is conventional wisdom, and the practice stops:

In the late 1990s he turned into one of America’s leading critics of soaring executive pay, warning that “in the next economic downturn, there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the super-corporate chieftains who pay themselves millions.”
November 19, 2005

Laurence Haughton on Peter Drucker

Laurence Haughton on Peter Drucker via ChristianSarkar.com:

He criticized organizations who issued directives to “cut 5 or 10 percent from budgets across the board.”
…
And I’ll bet others can find 100 additional quoted and ignored lessons from Peter Drucker just like that one
…
I’m sorry to say that despite all the tributes, up to now, we’ve learned very little from Peter Drucker.

It is frustrating, but I wouldn’t draw that conclusion.
(more…)

Superior Customer Experiences

Grow Your Business Through Superior Customer Experiences by D. Randall Brandt and Rodger Stotz:

In that study, Oakley found that there is a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance. Employee satisfaction is a key antecedent to employee engagement. He also found that organizations with engaged employees have customers who use their products more, and increased customer usage leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Managing organizations is a complex endeavor. Employee satisfaction is one factor in an interdependent system that a manager must consider. (more…)

Management Science for Software Engineering

Management Science for Software Engineering:

using the Theory of Constraints 5 focusing steps and the drum-buffer-rope solution for production flow problems, it was possible to increase the productivity of a sustained engineering department by more than 200%. In the final, quarter of the study period, a 25% increase (elevation) of the capacity constrained resource, produces a 25% increase in overall system throughput - just as the theory and model would predict.

Read the full paper by David Anderson, Microsoft, From Worst to Best in 9 Months - Implementing Drum-Buffer-Rope in Microsoft’s IT Department:
(more…)

November 17, 2005

The Man Who Invented Management

The Man Who Invented Management, a cover story in Business Week on Peter Drucker.

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