Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
February 28, 2006

Made in the USA

Is ‘Made in U.S.A.’ back in vogue?

As the need for speed in fashion retailing becomes ever more crucial to merchants, industry observers say “Made in U.S.A” is once again looking more attractive to some U.S. retailers versus importing from China.
…
The company used to import 70 percent of its merchandise from China and elsewhere and manufactured a smaller 30 percent of it in the U.S. Today it manufactures 60 percent locally and imports 40 percent, according to CEO Moshe Tsabag.

By shifting manufacturing back home, Tsabag said he’s able to deliver his order to retailers in about 45 days versus the 120 to 150 days it would take to source the same items from China.

More evidence of the benefits of “lean manufacturing,” though it seems they are getting only a few benefits (reduction of waste, faster resupply of “hot items”) and they may well not know about lean thinking. By studying and applying lean ideas they should be able to reduce the 45 day turn-around time. Perhaps they should read the Fashion Incubator blog.
(more…)

Theory in Practice

Theory Meets Reality In The Heartland by Bill Waddell:

An old boss of mine was fond of saying, “There are few things in life more tragic than to see your beautiful theories murdered by a gang of brutal facts,” usually when I approached him with a hare brained idea about turning one of our manufacturing systems inside out.

Those who only think about theories don’t accomplish much. And those that don’t have theories don’t either. To achive success, theories need to be put to the test and modified as evidence shows flaws in the theory.

“Knowledge is built upon theory… Rational prediction requires theory and builds knowledge through systematic revision and extention of theory based on comparison of prediction with observation.” (Page 102, The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming).

February 27, 2006

Lean Manufacturing Success

K&S makes first shipment to China by Buzz Ball

The award was given for K&S Wire’s continuous improvement in manufacturing excellence and its implementation of “lean” enterprise principles into its everyday operations.

It is because of these principles that Schwartz was able to make the announcement about the shipment to China.

“We took the order to construct 111,000 wire frames that will hold flip-flops,” said Schwartz. “Because of our ‘lean’ principles, our price was better than could be found in China. This is a first for us and I hope we will have many more in the future.”

(more…)

February 26, 2006

Lean Retailing

Teaching the Big Box New Tricks

Tesco in Britain has been a pioneer in lean provision for more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, as he looked at the opportunities for retailers provided by the emergence of lean logistics, Graham Booth, Tesco’s supply-chain director (now retired) had a very simple insight: A rapid replenishment system triggered by the customer would work in any retail format.

Book excerpt from Lean Solutions.
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Manufacturing’s Influential Thinkers

Manufacturing’s Influential Thinkers & Doers by John S. McClenahen

This article includes many of those I feel have contributed to the improvement of management over the last 35 years including: W. Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno, Shigeo Shingo, Gary Hamel and Eliyahu M. Goldratt.

However, “the best manufacturing thinkers of the last several decades” are Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, contends Mercer’s Slywotzky. Ohno was a Toyota Motor Co. vice president and Shingo a consultant. In laying out the principles now often collected under the label “lean,” they challenged the prevailing notion that manufacturing had to be done on a large scale with long runs and large inventories. They challenged the notion that quality control was something done at the end of the production line. And they challenged the notion that a production line keeps running no matter what. (more…)

February 25, 2006

Deming’s 14 Obligations of Management

Deming and his 14 Points with comments from the Random Thoughts from a CTO blog.

La-Z-Boy Lean

La-Z-Boy changing production lines to compete with China:

But in an attempt to better compete with the overseas market, the Neosho plant, along with six others in its division, is transitioning to the Lean Cellular Manufacturing method. In the new concept, the chair or sofa is manufactured by a team within a cell, thus eliminating separate departments. No jobs will be lost in the transition from batch-and-queue to lean cellular.

“Basically, we will have teams building the chairs from start to finish,” said La-Z-Boy Midwest Human Relations Manager Billy Meyer. “Right now, we have three cells up and running, but by the end of the transition, we will have 37 cells.”

Great news. It is good when companies take the improvement strategy to cope with changes in the marketplace.
(more…)

February 24, 2006

Innovation at Toyota

The Birth of the Prius by Alex Taylor III:

By the end of 1993 the development team had determined that higher oil prices and a growing middle class around the world would require the new car to be both roomy and fuel-efficient. Other than that, they were given no guidance. “I was trying to come up with the future direction of the company,” says Watanabe, who headed corporate planning at the time. “I didn’t have a very specific idea about the vehicle.”

Seems like a good job of providing a vision of what was needed without overly restrictive targets and goals (See: Targets Distorting the System).
(more…)

February 23, 2006

2006 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing

2006 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing

American manufacturing continues to experience turbulent times in maintaining and growing manufacturing jobs. The only business approach that has demonstrated superior achievement is Lean Enterprise Management (the Toyota Production System), the foundation of the Shingo Prize. All 14 companies to be recognized in 2006 have clearly achieved exemplary lean manufacturing excellence.

I am sure the Delphi winning plants are going to feed the complaints raised earlier: Don’t Let Delphi Drag Down the Shingo Prize - Delphi’s Sobering Message To Us All.
(more…)

February 22, 2006

Global Manufacturing Data by Country

I am still looking for a good source for manufacturing data by country and year. Today I found some data from the United Nations Statistics Division. The data for the top five manufacturing economies: China, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States. Figures are in current $US billion. The data used is for Mining, Manufacturing and Utilities (because China and Germany do not have manufacturing data separated out).

Country 2001 2002 2003 2004
United States 1,781 1,779 1,876 2,012
Japan 991 929 1017
China 507 551 638 754
Germany 421 449 545 613
United Kingdom 280 283 322 378

For manufacturing output only:

Country 2001 2002 2003 2004
United States 1,460 1,463 1,523 1,623
Japan 866 812 894
United Kingdom 220 223 254 298

This data shows the United States manufacturing economy is continuing to grow and is solidly the largest manufacturing economy: which contradicts what many believe. It is true manufacturing jobs are decreasing in the United States and worldwide - China is losing far more manufacturing jobs than the USA.
(more…)

February 21, 2006

Quality Customer Focus

Delivering Two Kinds of Quality by Keith McFarland, Business Week:

What do the Japanese take for granted when it comes to quality? They take for granted that things should work as they are supposed to, and they even see an elegance to things working properly — whether it’s cars, subway schedules, traditional flower arranging, or the famous tea ceremony.

Japanese manufacturers were so obsessed with taken-for-granted quality that they created a constant stream of innovations that built on renowned quality-management consultant Ed Deming’s original concepts: lean manufacturing, just-in-time industry, and design for quality. In today’s competitive markets, manufacturers need to be very far along this quality innovation curve — or moving along it very quickly.

Related ideas:
Kano model of Customer Satisfaction: Kano saw three types of customer satisfaction: required (basic quality also threshold requirements), more is better (performance quality) and delighter (excitement quality).

Customers expectations change over time. Often what was once enough to delight a customer (remote control for a TV) becomes expected. Once a feature is expected the organization gets no credit for providing it they only risk a negative reaction if they fail to provide it.

Voice of the Customer

February 20, 2006

John Simpson


This is the best I can do to create my Simpson self. Until I have a guest appearance on the show, I guess this will have to do. You can try for yourself using the Simpson Maker: post a comment with a link to your character.
(more…)

Six Sigma and the Mobile Workforce

Six Sigma and the Mobile Workforce by Lynda Finn and Sue Reynard:

This type of data collection also helps process owners or managers spot systemic problems that appear across processes. For example, a process owner reviewing all field agent reports may detect problems appearing in more than one location. Now, a fix made in one location can be incorporated into MTA based systems so all agents will benefit immediately. This type of systemic leveraging of learning and improvement is what generates the biggest payoffs from Six Sigma investments.

The Art of Work

The Art of Work by Ann Marsh:

These companies are now using Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas to learn how they can get the best out of their workers or create more compelling connections with their customers. Without flow, there’s no creativity, says Csikszentmihalyi, and in today’s innovation-centric world, creativity is a requirement, not a frill.

Excellent books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991. People enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction.

Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1997. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders to poets and artists, the author uses his famous “flow” theory to explain the creative process.

February 19, 2006

The Deming Difference

The Deming Difference:

Everyone wants instant pudding. Then, Dr. Deming stands up and says there is no such thing as instant pudding. That we must learn how to integrate knowledge of people, statistics, and theory of knowledge into a working, breathing organizational system. That understanding these principles will lead to transformation. Instead of being competitive, individual components of the system will, for optimization, reinforce each other. This process is not spontaneous and is discontinuous. Some days little will seem to be accomplished. Other days great breakthroughs will occur. Progress will not be predictable.

Funding Invention Vs. Managing Innovation

Funding Invention Vs. Managing Innovation by John Hagel and John Seely Brown

But if we shift our attention from invention to innovation, we begin to see a much broader horizon. Innovation — the ability to create and capture economic value from invention — is what really drives both the economic prosperity of nations and the shareholder value of corporations.

Innovation isn’t just confined to commercialization of new products. It can also build upon creative new practices, processes, relationships, or business models, and even institutional innovations such as open-source computing — invention occurs in all these domains. And while breakthrough innovations can generate significant economic value, sustaining that value requires a capacity for continual incremental innovations.

(more…)

February 18, 2006

Visible Data

Effective visual signals are important for effective management improvement: lean thinking emphasizes such ideas. Top 5 Rules of Effective Measurement Boards is an excellent post on how to make measurement effective.

Take the time to find the important measures and then don’t keep data hidden in some drawer or computer file out of people’s view and therefore out of mind. Post the important data for everyone to see. Review the data as changes are made and see that the changes had the desired result. Update the measures when appropriate (for posting visibly - you will of course be measuring more than the few measures that belong on measurement boards).
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February 15, 2006

Performance Appraisal Problems

The Struggle To Measure Performance, Business Week:

One company that recently decided to dump forced rankings altogether is Chemtura (CEM), a $3 billion specialty chemicals company formed by the July merger of Crompton in Middlebury, Conn., and Great Lakes Chemical in Indianapolis.

“The system forced me to turn people who were excellent performers into people who were getting mediocre ratings,” says Eric Wisnefsky, Chemtura’s vice-president for corporate finance. “That demotivates them, and they’d follow up with asking: ‘What could I do differently next year?’ That’s a very difficult question to answer when you feel that people actually met all your expectations.” Chemtura’s new process still assigns grades. But to better motivate employees in the middle, labels such as “satisfactory” have been upgraded to phrases such as “successful performance.”

As we mentioned in our previous thread on performance without appraisal more organizations are acting on what most people know - performance appraisal process is counter-productive. Deming on Performance Appraisal, Out of the Crisis, page 101:

Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring. the sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.

(more…)

February 14, 2006

Lean Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement — Taking A Big-Picture Approach To Lean by Jonathan Katz, Industry Week:

Northrop Grumman Newport News geared its lean value stream toward meeting customer commitments rather than strictly using it as a means to improve production. The company is constantly measuring its progress on customer contracts by using scorecards that help managers determine how close or how far they are to meeting customer agreements. Through this process, the company has saved on materials, stock time and labor. This includes a 58% materials savings in the torch repair cell, a 61% reduction of touch time in the shipyard and a 5.8-day reduction in dock-to-stock time.
February 13, 2006

Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System

Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System. A very interesting article on Toyota’s web site (www.toyota.co.jp).

At the 2003 Automotive Parts System Solution Fair, held in Tokyo, June 18, 2003, Teruyuki Minoura, then-managing director of global purchasing, Toyota Motor Corporation, talked about his experiences with TPS (the Toyota Production System), and what it means for suppliers and for the future of the auto industry.

This short article is pepered with many great quotes as section headers:

  • In TPS, the T also stands for “Thinking”
  • To cut lead-time, cut out all the bits that don’t add value.
  • The line must stop if there is a problem.
  • Ask yourself “Why?” five times.
  • Develop people who can come up with unique ideas.

(more…)

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