Lean Aerospace Initiative

Posted on March 31, 2006  Comments (0)

The Lean Aerospace Initiative at MIT has a large number of reports, case studies and articles available online.

The Initiative was formally launched as the Lean Aircraft Initiative in 1993 when leaders from the U.S. Air Force, MIT, labor unions, and defense aerospace businesses forged a trail-blazing partnership to transform the industry, reinvigorate the workplace, and reinvest in America using a philosophy called “lean.”

The Initiative’s stated mission is to research, develop, and promulgate practices, tools, and knowledge that enable and accelerate the envisioned transformation of the greater United States aerospace enterprise through people and processes.

Lean, Mean Business Machine

Posted on March 29, 2006  Comments (0)

Lean, mean business machine, from New Zealand:

But it is wasted effort that is the main focus, Mr Shook says. The lean philosophy is about first making waste visible, then acting on every level in a company, from large to small, to eliminate it.

This point is often overlooked – making waste visible is critical.

via Lean in New Zealand

What Innovation Means to Tesco

Posted on March 29, 2006  Comments (1)

What innovation means to Tesco by Sir Terry Leahy (Chief Executive of Tesco):

Innovators are all around us; innovation is after all just another word for an idea and we can all have those. Businesses must learn to harness the creativity of their workforce and encourage staff to come forward with ideas. It’s not always easy as some good ideas will fail but companies have to be comfortable with that if they are to avoid stifling innovation.

What makes Toyota tick?

Posted on March 27, 2006  Comments (0)

Topic: Management Improvement

Advanced Manufacturing magazine continues the focus on Toyota with a cover article, What Makes Toyota Tick? by Vanessa Chris

“Toyota has been coined ‘the most feared automaker in the industry.’” Just a few days ago I posted on: Fear Remains a Toyota Motivator. No matter what Toyota continues to be the focus of attention.

Every aspect of the assembly process flows flawlessly into the next – making the plant’s 157 processes seem like one. Parts from suppliers are delivered on racks that attach seamlessly onto Toyota’s assembly cells. When an assembly line is short on parts, sensors send messages to a team member’s wireless PDA, so he or she knows exactly when and what type of part is needed. Every team member here is recertified in six month intervals, to ensure optimal performance. And digital andon boards hanging throughout the facility report issues and the day’s progress – as well as any problems – in real time.
Read more

Indian Deming Prize Winner Expanding

Posted on March 27, 2006  Comments (0)

Lucas TVS on Global and Local Expansion Mode

A delegation of top officials from leading Japanese industries — mostly comprising Toyota group and its suppliers — had also visited the Lucas TVS’ Chennai plant. The delegation is part of the central Japan Quality Control Association, an organisation promoting quality control in cooperation of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).

The purpose of the visit was to introduce the delegation to the best practices amongst the member companies and also outside Japan. In 2004, Lucas TVS had won the prestigious Deming medal…

According to Balaji the Japanese delegation led by Tadashi Onishi, JTEKT Corporation, said that quality is not a magic solution but a systematic practice, and quality should not be measured by the absence of defect. A company should reach a condition where it innovates in quality. Further, all the stakeholders-employees, suppliers and others- should be involved in quality control. “The delegation also told us that quality systems should be at all levels of management and not only at the shop floor level,” Balaji said.

Read more

No More Lean Excuses

Posted on March 26, 2006  Comments (4)

No More Lean Excuses by Dan Jones

I have recently been getting a striking reaction from many senior management audiences. They all agree that products have got vastly better over recent years, but they equally agree that the process of ordering and buying them and getting them serviced has got worse!

This is a theme in Jones and Womack’s recent book: Lean Solutions.
Read more

Shenandoah National Park Photos

Posted on March 26, 2006  Comments (0)

Topic: ,

photo of vista in Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, lies in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a few hours from Washington DC. Skyline Drive runs the length of the park as does the Appalachian Trail. I hiked several trails in October, 2004 and took these pictures.
Read more

Secrets of the World’s Best Companies

Posted on March 23, 2006  Comments (1)

Best-kept secrets of the world’s best companies by Paul Kaihla.

Not even the most successful companies in the world are managed by the book. Great management formulas aren’t handed down on stone tablets, or found in the writings or speeches of gurus and consultants. They emerge from years of experimentation, trial and error, regime change, reorganizations, crises, and employee suggestions.

I agree that management is much more complex than books or simple theories claim. I think one of the great difficulties people have in evaluating management concepts is that the complexity (and interaction) makes it very difficult to evaluate (especially using accurate data).

Still, I think great management ideas are found in the thoughts of leading management thinkers (now it is true most I think most “writings or speeches of gurus and consultants” don’t provide much use but the right thinkers do offer great value).
Read more

Fear Remains a Toyota Motivator

Posted on March 23, 2006  Comments (0)

Fear Remains a Toyota Motivator by Harry Stoffer, Automotive News.

First the don’t let the title fool you, this is not an indication Toyota is going against Deming’s obligation of management to “Drive out fear and build trust so that everyone can work effectively”. Deming was talking about driving out the fear management creates for employees intentionally (forced ranking…) and un-intentionally (creating a climate where people are more fearful of pointing out problems than just ignoring them…). See: Deming and Toyota.

This article is talking about Toyota’s never ending quest to do better. At least in North America we seem biased toward putting that quest for doing better negatively. Rather than being drawn to improve it is most often stated as being scared that if we don’t we will have to pay for failing to improve. Thus the reference to fear.
Read more

Lean and Theory of Constraints

Posted on March 22, 2006  Comments (1)

David Anderson’s post, Lean vs. TOC – No Conflict, is an excellent addition to the previous post here: Lean Thinking and Management.

I demonstrated these ideas recently by taking an updated version of my XIT Sustained Engineering paper from the TOCICO in Barcelona to the Lean Design and Development conference and recasting all the exploitation and subordination steps as waste reduction instead.

David refers to a post, looking for a conflict, that is definitely worth reading:

This is the dilemma: “Optimize everything” conflicts with “Only optimize the bottleneck”. I like both approaches and have used them both successfully. How is it possible that two of my favourite techniques disagree?

I like the way the post looks at this question. I must admit, my personally view is that the conflict is not as stark as it may appear. Read more

Flow

Posted on March 22, 2006  Comments (3)

“Flow” and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi by David Farmer:

How does it feel to be in “the flow”?

1. Completely involved, focused, concentrating – with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training
2. Sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going
4. Knowing the activity is doable – that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored
5. Sense of serenity – no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego – afterwards feeling of transcending ego in ways not thought possible
6. Timeliness – thoroughly focused on present, don’t notice time passing
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces “flow” becomes its own reward

Read more

Lean Thinking and Management

Posted on March 20, 2006  Comments (0)

Several interesting posts have been inspired by the Kaizen Priorities post on Got Boondoggle. While it has been mentioned debating these ideas may not be valuable, I believe it can be valuable to explore the reasons behind the different views.

Bill Waddel’s post, Lean Manufacturing, points to the importance of cycle time reduction (versus the priorities mentioned in the original post). I think that point is valuable. He also talks about the reasons for Six Sigma’s failures and the difficulty finding lean manufacturing success stories (outside Toyota).

I agree that we should acknowledge the paucity of success stories. The failures of management are not minor. The problems are large and the successes seem limited. The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go “up” the organization chart.
Read more

Cells and High Volumes

Posted on March 20, 2006  Comments (0)

Cells and High Volumes: Forget What You Think You Know by Gary S. Vasilash:

True cellular manufacturing depends on the cooperation and orchestration of all employees. The reason for this is simple: The objective to get rid of waste means that all of the people involved in the process must work in a synchronized manner. One-piece flow doesn’t allow for build-ups of inventory between processes, so people must do each step in the required manner (a manner, it should be noted, that isn’t static, but open to improvement).

Organizational Learning

Posted on March 18, 2006  Comments (0)

Why Your Organization Isn’t Learning All It Should by Anita Tucker, Amy Edmondson, and Steven Spear

Our analysis of qualitative data suggests that the problem-solving behavior of front-line workers may reduce an organization’s ability to detect underlying causes of recurring problems and thus take corrective action.

While problems must be solved to reduce the impact on the current customer the organization must also prevent future customers from the poor result.
Read more

Deming and Toyota

Posted on March 17, 2006  Comments (1)

In response to Deming Electronic Network message, Deming and Toyota:
“I have read a few of the threads referring to Toyota and their success. I am somewhat familiar with the Toyota Production System (where Lean principles sprouted from), but I have often wondered if Toyota subscribed to all of Deming’s 14 points.

I believe Toyota applied Deming’s ideas to create a management system and continued to develop that system to create the Toyota Production System (also known as lean manufacturing). I believe a convincing argument can be made for Toyota following all 14 points.

An interesting article on Toyota’s web site illustrates their commitment to several of the points, Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System.
Read more

Using Design of Experiments

Posted on March 17, 2006  Comments (4)

How to Institute DOE in Your Company by Davis Balestracci:

DOE works, but I don’t need to sell that to the readers of this newsletter. But as certain as we all are, no one can deny that design of experiments faces resistance even in environments where it is a proven tool. Every research scientist or engineer who has had a major success from DOE can tell you story after story of how management still wanted problems solved one-factor-at-a-time.

Design of Experiments (DoE) was developed by R.A. Fisher in the 1920s (related terms: factorial design, multivariate expertness). Six Sigma was the first general management approach that specifically highlighted the use of Designed Experiments for improvement. Still the use of factorial designed experiments is much less than it could be.
Read more

VIP?

Posted on March 16, 2006  Comments (0)

The images shows: I am 64th in line as a VIP. If I were not a VIP I would be 1st in line.

Actually the graphic is mainly just funny. The real broken part is that the system has disconnected me twice and then you have to wait to be readmitted – granted only a minute and a half. CBS is trying live internet video on a scale not attempted before. It is bound to have a level of service less than tried and true methods.

By signing up early (still for free) you could be treated as a VIP. The first time I tried to sign in my VIP status helped. The image for the video is of pretty low quality but still I am satisfied. I would hope in future years the quality will improve. But for now I am happy with this opportunity at all. The biggest failure with the current setup is the do not allow viewing of the game that “is being broadcast” in your area. However right now my station stopped showing the Marquette game and the internet site still doesn’t let me view it. They really should fix this problem.

See more broken items

Kaizen Priorities

Posted on March 16, 2006  Comments (0)

Kaizen Priorities by Mike Wroblewski:

Priority 1: Kaizen your bottleneck station first – If you don’t know what is your bottleneck station, find it. There are many ways to find your bottleneck: all the inventory is piled in front of it, people downstream are waiting on it, it has the most overtime, it’s a top maintenance priority, etc.

Another excellent post from Got Boondoggle.

Six Sigma Won’t Fix Bad Management?

Posted on March 15, 2006  Comments (5)

Re: Six Sigma won’t cure bad management

I believe Six Sigma can be an effective management improvement strategy. It is not the most effective, in my opinion, but still effective. In my opinion, if Six Sigma isn’t making a significant impact on fixing bad management then it isn’t a very effective six sigma effort.

Like most management concepts how it is applied varies tremendously. If one just uses some tools that are part of the “Six Sigma tool kit” (mostly tools from TQM and the like) then you might improve bad management only marginally.
Read more

Customer Focus

Posted on March 15, 2006  Comments (0)

Winning With Service by John Teresko:

“From our viewpoint, machines are increasingly more difficult to differentiate for most applications,” admits Harry C. Moser, president, Agie Charmilles Corp., Lincolnshire, Ill. “There are many good competitors, and while we think our products are the best, for a lot of applications it is getting increasingly hard to prove, and therefore we have chosen to [also] differentiate via service.

Service can be a great differentiator, if you can do it well. Since, so often, service is poor in so many areas those that provide good service can set themselves apart. It is usually difficult for competitors to copy exceptional service.

Related posts:

Older posts →

  • Recent Trackbacks

  • Comments