Peter Drucker On Leadership

Posted on November 17, 2005  Comments (0)

Peter Drucker On Leadership:

Effective leaders check their performance. They write down, “What do I hope to achieve if I take on this assignment?” They put away their goals for six months and then come back and check their performance against goals. This way, they find out what they do well and what they do poorly. They also find out whether they picked the truly important things to do. I’ve seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things.

More on Peter Drucker:

Problems with Lean Manufacturing Awards

Posted on November 17, 2005  Comments (0)

Dangers in Lean Manufacturing Awards from the Got Boondogle blog:

My simple understanding of lean principles is to focus on the pursuit of company survival for eternity with the elimination of waste while adding value for customers, enhancing quality of life for employees and contributing to society. The pursuit of lean manufacturing awards is not on the list of objectives.

Another good post from an excellent blog that is well worth reading. Much can go wrong when pursuing an award.

I am not convinced pursuing an award is definitely a bad idea. It might be that the pursuit of an award can help the organization focus. However, I also see the dangers and would have to guess in most instances it is less effective to pursue management improvement awards than just pursuing improvement of the organization.

Managing Innovation

Posted on November 16, 2005  Comments (6)

TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma: Do Process Management Programs Discourage Innovation?

“In the appropriate setting, process management activities can help companies improve efficiency, but the risk is that you misapply these programs, in particular in areas where people are supposed to be innovative,” notes Benner. “Brand new technologies to produce products that don’t exist are difficult to measure. This kind of innovation may be crowded out when you focus too much on processes you can measure.”

Well I don’t think the idea that innovation is needed was not understood decades ago. It seems to be one of the typical refrains when people want to change – oh that old stuff was only about x and now we need to focus on Y.
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A Great Day for Georgia-Pacific

Posted on November 16, 2005  Comments (0)

A Great Day for Georgia-Pacific by Bill Waddell

The Koch people also said that G-P would be much better off not having to deal with “the distraction of quarterly reports” and they would be able to “execute strategic decisions much faster” if they did not have to drag Wall Street along with them.
…
They previously had been a Honda North America supplier, but have done so well they are going to sell automatic transmission shifters to Honda world wide, including in Japan. They have been described by one lean expert as “the poster boy for the Toyota Production System”. Imagine that! A U.S. company – in Michigan, no less – supplying Honda in Japan. So much for lean not being enough and U.S. companies having to be lean and in China in order to turn a buck.

Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog

Posted on November 15, 2005  Comments (0)

We have moved the Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog to a new home.

About Our Science and Engineering Blog:
The title of the blog gives you an idea of the topics we explore. Some additional insight into our aim:

  • Primary education (k-12) in science, math and engineering – we will post about the state of education (research etc.) and news and items of interest to teachers and students. We aim to be a resource that helps teachers and students learn about science and engineering. The K-12 category will be targeted at teachers and students. We are also trying a students category for items we think might be of particular interest to students (and we believe teachers might find useful as items to interest students in science and engineering).

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Lean Education Academic Network

Posted on November 14, 2005  Comments (1)

Lean Education Academic Network, is a group of academic and industry people interested in bringing lean content into academic programs. The Leaneduc email list will send you announcements from the network.

From Exclusive Q&A with Jim Womack, Part 4:

We recently came across a new industrial engineering text from a major American publisher titled something like “Principles of Lean Engineering” in which the first chapter was about … Economic Order Quantity! It got Jim so mad that he decided it was time to bring together all of the right-minded engineering faculty along with operations faculty from business schools to create the just-formed Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN). The idea is for right-minded faculty to share all of the existing teaching materials and then devise the kind of textbooks and teaching materials that should have been universally used years ago.

Conclusion of Jim Womack Interview

Posted on November 14, 2005  Comments (0)

Interview with Jim Womack part 5 of 5 has been posted by the Lean manufacturing blog. Each part provide valuable insights, from part 4:

Toyota has recently said that it will now make a major effort to apply process thinking to dealer networks, probably beginning in Europe, and all of us who buy cars should wish them every success. We are making a major effort in this book to show how a totally different system of sales and service would work and we hope that a few dealers and then a lot will drink the Cool-aid.

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Management Pioneer Peter Drucker 1909 – 2005

Posted on November 13, 2005  Comments (0)

Management expert Peter Drucker passed away at age 95. See: Peter F. Drucker Information from Claremount University and our previous post.

Here we list links to some of his work.

There is an excellent podcast of an interview with him on NPR (Peter Drucker – podcast interview) on management, the state of the world today and where we are headed. A profound view from Peter Drucker in his 95th year.

His revised edition of the Effective Executive is due out in January.

Post-Capitalist interview with Peter Drucker in Wired, 1993 (Post-Capitalist Society book by Peter Drucker):

International economic theory is obsolete. The traditional factors of production – land, labor, and capital – are becoming restraints rather than driving forces. Knowledge is becoming the one critical factor of production. It has two incarnations: Knowledge applied to existing processes, services, and products is productivity; knowledge applied to the new is innovation.

When you look at it that way, the last 40 years of economic history begins to make some sense.

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Management Guru Peter Drucker 1909-2005

Posted on November 12, 2005  Comments (1)

Management expert Peter Drucker passed away at age 95. Peter F. Drucker Information from Claremount University.

In 2002, Peter Ferdinand Drucker was awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Drucker, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 and moved to the United States in 1937. He taught at New York University as Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 through 2002 he taught at Claremont University. The university’s School of Management was named for him in 1987.
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ToC in UK Surgery

Posted on November 9, 2005  Comments (0)

UK surgeon uses TOC approach to double capacity and eliminate waiting lists by Clarke Ching via Carnival of Lean Leadership II

First, he has identified himself – or surgeons in general – as the current system constraint:
…
Second, he’s figured out how to exploit himself as the constraint – i.e. how to make him as efficient as possible:
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Third, he’s subordinated the other resources in the process to make sure he is as busy as possible:

Excellent post illustrating how Theory of Constraints can be used to analyze why an improvement is effective.

Government Lean Six Sigma

Posted on November 9, 2005  Comments (3)

Topic: Management Improvement

Deep Thinkers by Kimberly Palmer, GovExec.com:

“This is not a fad that will die out. It’s been tried, it’s been tested, it’s true. If you look at the best-run companies in industry, this is part of the heart and soul that’s making them successful,” says Mark Price, president of George Group Federal Services, part of Dallas-based George Group Consulting.

Unfortunately I would have to say the article does strike me as talking about fadish behavior ,not true transformation in management approaches. I was involved in management improvement efforts in government for years and the government does have examples of very well managed organizations (as well as poorly managed organizations). And too often superficial improvements were seen as a significant achievement. The article talks about things that are fine but just touch the surface of the needed improvements.
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Dell Ranked as Top Supply Chain – Toyota Sixth

Posted on November 9, 2005  Comments (0)

The Top 25 Supply Chains for 2005, AMR Research:

Supply chain leaders are able to shape demand, instantly respond to market changes, and crush their competitors. According to AMR Research benchmarking data, leaders carry 15% less inventory, are 60% faster to market, and complete 17% more perfect orders.
…
The first component of the ranking is publicly available financial data, which comprises 60% of the total score: return on assets and inventory turns each accounts for 25%, and trailing 12 months’ growth accounts for 10%. The second component of the ranking is AMR Research’s opinion, which is 40% of the total score.

Related post: Dell’s Supply Chain

Womack and Jones Webinar

Posted on November 9, 2005  Comments (0)

The Lean Enterprise Institute is offering a free 1 hour webinar with James Womack and Dan Jones on November 15th at 2 PM (US Eastern Time).

Jim will deconstruct this broken consumer-provider-manufacturer model and show how to repair it using the six principles of lean consumption. The principles will be illustrated with examples of companies already leading the way from the age of mass consumption to the age of lean consumption and lean solutions.

Jim will also describe how the familiar value-stream mapping tool can be applied to consumption and provision streams to identify and remove enormous amounts of wasted time, human effort, and resources. It’s simply a matter of teaching everyone involved how to see the current state and how to envision a much better future state.

Related:

Eight Essential Tools for Six Sigma

Posted on November 8, 2005  Comments (0)

Eight Essential Tools by Ron Snee, Quality Progress:

In my experience, eight tools are used most frequently in Six Sigma projects – all eight use statistical thinking and methods. The tools are: process maps, cause and effect matrices (CE), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), measurement system analysis (MSA), process capability studies, multi-vari studies, design of experiments (DOE) and process control plans.

Ron is the co-author of 2 excellent books on Six Sigma:

and many articles:

Lean Hospitals

Posted on November 7, 2005  Comments (0)

Hospitals Turning Into Lean Machines by Megan Myers:

The push toward adopting more efficient strategies in health care largely stems from a crucial need to reduce health care costs.

In 2002, health care expenditures in the United States were $1.6 trillion, or 14.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Meanwhile, studies have estimated between 30 percent and 60 percent of the costs of providing health care services is waste.

To cut that waste, hospitals are looking at their organizations from a patient’s perspective. That means breaking down the systems and starting fresh.

Communication Failures Impact Quality

Posted on November 7, 2005  Comments (0)

Outsourcing Communication Impacts Quality by Kevin Meyer:

She immediately knew what I was talking about, and said that it has been a problem for about six months. The margin at the bottom of the statement is about an eighth to a quarter inch too wide, thereby pushing the address upwards. Unfortunately she didn’t know if and when it was going to be resolved, but after some friendly prodding she gave me a number at their corporate customer service center in the United States.

Read the rest of the post, it is a good reminder of the failures that are far too common in companies today. Even with improvements there is still so much poor service that those helping companies manage more effectively are nowhere near running out of opportunities to improve.

Lean Manufacturing: The 3rd Generation

Posted on November 7, 2005  Comments (0)

Lean Manufacturing: The 3rd Generation by David Drickhamer:

A Toyota executive recently attributed the company’s long-term success to “brilliant process management.” Such processes are everywhere in business, including office and administrative work, areas where Toyota itself is working on how to extend TPS thinking. This is where Couch invokes TPS2, or “business-process kaizen,” and the challenge of dealing with non-physical inputs and outputs and much longer time frames than on the shop floor, such as the three-year product development cycle. Just as kanban cards are a method for transforming intangible information into a physical form, office applications of lean make work and information flow more visible.

Lean Manufacturing in Forest Products

Posted on November 5, 2005  Comments (0)

Lean Manufacturing – An Idea Whose Time is Coming to Forest Products? by Thomas G. Dolan

In fact, while many understand the basic concepts and have tried various implementations as quick fixes to problems, most miss its full and lasting potential. The full capability of the lean philosophy involves creating a culture of observing and learning and an ability to implement, to innovate, and to continuously improve.

More lean thinking articles.

Interview with Jim Womack

Posted on November 4, 2005  Comments (0)

Lean Solutions book cover image

Q&A With Jim Womack by Mark Graban:

The whole idea of lean solutions is to start with today’s customer in today’s circumstances and ask what the customer really wants. When we do this, the first thing to note is that manufactured goods have gotten vastly better, somewhat cheaper

James Womack also lists the six principles of Lean Solutions which seems to be boil down to one of the principles: “Get me exactly what I want” (though the way he describes this seems to be different than I read those words – “The proposition of retailers and other providers of goods from stock is that you can always find any of the items they have on offer”). That concept in then clarified by explaining what people want, such as: “don’t waste my time,” “Solve my problem completely,” give it to me when and where I want…
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Dell’s Supply Chain

Posted on November 3, 2005  Comments (0)

Two articles on Dell’s supply chain.

Living in Dell Time by Joshua Lutz:

The aftershocks of the port closings reverberated for weeks. Many companies began to question the wisdom of running so lean in an uncertain world, and demand for warehouse space soared as they piled up buffer inventory to insure against labor unrest, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks. But for Dell, the episode only reinforced the value of living on the knife’s edge.

Inventory Decisions in Dell’s Supply Chain by Roman Kapuscinski, Rachel Q. Zhang, Paul Carbonneau, Robert Moore and Bill Reeves:

Many components lose 0.5 to 2.0 percent of their value per week, and a supply chain packed with yesterday’s technology is nearly worthless. With its direct sales, however, Dell carries very little inventory: the whole organization concentrates on speeding components and products through its supply chain. Dell delivers new products to market faster than its competitors and does not have to sell old products at a discount, because it has none.

Dell’s stock has been taking a beating recently, but I remain positive on the second to worst performer 10 stocks for 10 years post. Just over 6 months since the post Google leads the pack up 77% (Toyota is next up 27%) while Pfizer and Dell are down 19% and 17% respectively (the only other decliner is Cisco down .5%).

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