NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge

Posted on March 13, 2006  Comments (0)

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans.

To play, sign in to ESPN and register, if you need to, or sign into your account (using the link at the very top of the page).

Once you create your entry, you will see a link to “create or join groups.” Click that link. Then enter curiouscat in the find group box. Select the curiouscat group and enter cat as the password.

Getting Lean Right

Posted on March 13, 2006  Comments (0)

Getting Lean “Right”: 10 Factors to Understand Before Embarking on Your Lean Transformation by Jamie Flinchbaugh:

So how is it that such a low percentage of companies that know about lean can turn it into a success? It’s not because they haven’t heard about continuous flow, or they don’t know how to do the 5S’s, or they’ve never seen a kaizen workshop. It is because the leadership, cultural, organizational and implementation challenges are bigger than most people anticipate.

Boondoggle Rules

Posted on March 12, 2006  Comments (0)

Topic: Management Improvement, Lean Thinking

Easy Lean from Got Boondoggle:

The lean journey is a long, continuous process of learning, experimentation and improvement.
…
Most of you are smart enough not to buy into this branding of lean. However, there are some short-sighted executives that might fall for this slick shortcut to “Easy Lean.” That would be a shame. For those with limited lean enlightenment, I will provide a few short rules to get past the branding of “Easy Lean.”
  • Lean is not easy
  • There are NO software solutions in lean.
  • Always Simplify first, Automate last (and automate only if needed)
  • If it sounds too good to be true, it is!

Another great post from the great Got Boondoggle blog.
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Mount Rainier National Park Photos

Posted on March 11, 2006  Comments (0)

photo of Mount Rainier

I have posted, the final destination of my trip last summer to the Pacific Northwest National Parks: Mount Rainier National Park.
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Toyota in China: Full Speed Ahead

Posted on March 10, 2006  Comments (1)

Toyota in China: Full Speed Ahead, Business Week. Yoshimi Inaba, who’s driving the Japanese auto maker’s expansion in the Middle Kingdom, discusses the Chinese market and his goals there. Toyota’s market share is just 3.5% in China, compared to 13% in the U.S. and more than 40% at home in Japan.

We’re a minor player in the China market, with a 3.5% share, but we’re one of the few manufacturers where demand exceeds supply. Even though we see big potential for growth, we will make sure we’re not in a position of overcapacity. That will be a very key element. And as long as you retain the quality, treat dealers as partners, and avoid oversupply, the results will come. The race for the Chinese market is just around the first corner.

Lean Management Idea for Health Care

Posted on March 9, 2006  Comments (0)

The Health Factory by Stpehen Spear, New York Times opinion piece:

Today, going to an American hospital seems about as safe as parachuting off a bridge. An estimated 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical error, and a nearly equal number succumb to infections they acquire in hospitals. Those rates are unacceptable in the world’s most medically advanced country.
…
To go from working around problems to identifying and solving them required hospital workers to change the way they worked, from the front lines to the senior levels. But the effects were profound. If the rest of the country’s hospitals follow that example, the national savings would be measured in tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars every year.

Consumer Idealized Design

Posted on March 8, 2006  Comments (0)

Consumer Idealized Design: Involving Consumers in The Product Development Process

Interactive Design vs. Reactive “Focus”

A consumer design session is characterized by at least three features which
distinguish it from a focus group.

(1) It requires innovation and interaction from participants.

(2) It is task-oriented, competitive and consensus-generating.

(3) It requires the articulation and design of the group’s notion of the ideal
in a designated product or service category.

This concept is based on the idea of Russell Ackoff – articles by Russell Ackoff.

NUMMI Plant Model

Posted on March 8, 2006  Comments (0)

via lean blog, NUMMI plant a model for ailing car industry (site broke the link so I removed it) by Tim Simmers:

The historic NUMMI joint venture – the first of its kind on U.S. soil between a Japanese and an American carmaker – is something of an industry gem. Its secret to success, besides the common sense of building small cars and trucks that are in demand, has been its good labor relations and adoption of Toyota’s “lean manufacturing” techniques. Referred to as the “Toyota Production System (TPS),” it is steeped in Japanese business lore and terms that stress and lay out a road map for quality, efficiency and production advances.

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Warren Buffett’s Shareholder Letter

Posted on March 6, 2006  Comments (4)

As usually Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter is packed with good investment thoughts along with some management wisdom.

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won’t change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO’s pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO – aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo – all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.

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Seth Godin Video

Posted on March 5, 2006  Comments (0)

Seth Godin has a great blog on marketing. To me, his views put marketing within the context of the system (of the whole organization) rather than a disconnected “stovepipe” as it is often treated. This fits with my bias in favor of systems thinking. He has written several books on the topic:

  • All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
  • Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
  • The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin and many others

He recently spoke at Google: view via Google Video. I found the video enjoyable and worth the 45 minutes.

Random comment: he needed some simple help from someone who spoke Japanese, he posted a message to his blog and a few minutes latter had two volunteers. I think that type of interaction is cool.

Saving for Retirement

Posted on March 5, 2006  Comments (2)


Our Financial Failings by Neil Irwin, Washington Post:

Meet the typical American family.

It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can’t manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.

That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

Saving for retirement is not complicated, it is just a matter of priorities. Most people care more about a Startbucks coffee each day (or season tickets, or new shoes, or a new car every couple of years or…) today than saving money for retirement. In a capitalist society we believe in letting people make their economic choices. The choices most of us make (in the USA) lead to the results above.
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Cease Mass Inspection for Quality

Posted on March 4, 2006  Comments (2)

Comment in response to, Re-Discovering W. Edwards Deming, a partial quote from that post:

Not all of the Deming approach is part of core TPS thinking. In particular, Deming advocated a statistical sampling approach to quality inspection, while Toyota focuses on 100% inspection or eliminating the need for inspection through via the concepts of Poka Yoke and Jidoka. As much as I admire Deming and his philosophy, I agree with the Toyota innovation that it is better to prevent defects from occurring, or at least preventing defects from reaching the customer.

Thanks for you continued interesting blog. I think some might read this post and be confused about what Deming thought about sampling and inspection.

Deming point 3 is “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.” (Out of the Crisis, 1982). I think Toyota’s improvement of the system to build quality into the product is exactly what Deming had it mind.
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The Power of Purpose

Posted on March 3, 2006  Comments (2)

The Power of Purpose by Rebecca A. Morgan:

Constancy of purpose means that quality decisions are not situational. End of month quality is the same as beginning of month. It means that the long term benefit of the organization is not sacrificed to hit quarterly targets. It means having your eye on the competition, whether it is in your industry or coming from elsewhere, with plans to stay ahead. Constancy of purpose doesn’t require the threat of a customer leaving to implement corrective actions based on root cause. It means that while your team may argue about how best to accomplish it, no one is confused about the commitment to deliver reliable quality.

Deming’s Fourteen Points, point 1: Create constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service. With the aim to become competitive, stay in business, and provided jobs.” source, Deming Institute

The Skinny on Lean

Posted on March 2, 2006  Comments (0)

The Skinny on Lean by Peter Bradley

The pursuit of perfection and obsessive attention to detail that characterize Toyota’s lean model are reflected in Menlo Worldwide’s 278,000-square-foot Brownstown facility, known as the Great Lakes Lean Logistics Center (GLLLC). Look around, and you’ll notice process maps on the wall of a room off the main warehouse. You’ll see taped outlines on the floor and walls to indicate the precise location of every cart, every tool, every barrel—often with photos showing what goes where. While leading a tour of the facility, Meaghan Diem, a Menlo Worldwide logistics manager, nudges a barrel back between its taped lines. “Some people think this is organization overkill,” she says, “but it makes it almost impossible not to make it right.”

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What is Lean Six Sigma?

Posted on March 1, 2006  Comments (0)

What is Lean Six Sigma? slides from a presentation (adobe acrobat format) at MAQIN (Madison Area Quality Improvement Network). FYI, I manage MAQIN’s web site and author blog – John Hunter.

I rarely link to slide presentations, but when the slides seem interesting enough I do link to them occasionally, as in this case. Still since slides are designed to act as supporting material to a presentation they leave much out. The following links provide articles with much more detail on this topic, via the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library:

Not Lean Retailing

Posted on March 1, 2006  Comments (0)

Renovating Home Depot Business Week

It is always dangerous to make too much of a magazine article, but Home Depot seems to be moving away from lean thinking in the following examples, to me anyway. The Home Depot founders:

allowed store managers immense autonomy. “Whether it was an aisle, department, or store, you were truly in charge of it,” says former store operations manager…

These days every major decision and goal at Home Depot flows down from Nardelli’s office. “There’s no question; Bob’s the general,” says Joe DeAngelo, 44, executive vice-president of Home Depot Supply and a GE veteran.

Nothing is wrong with major decisions being made by the leaders but the article leaves the impression many non-major decisions are cetralized too. That is a problem for those who believe in management improvement ideas including lean thinking.
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Executives Participating in Kaizen Events

Posted on March 1, 2006  Comments (0)

The Masco Mapmakers by Bill Waddell

Guys from Brasscraft or Morgantown Plastics might go to a Delta faucet plant for the event – and note that these are executives, not factory level folks – that spend the week working on the kaizens. Of course, the Grand Kaizens are not the only ones. Individual plants hold their own kaizens by the hundreds. The primary purpose of the Grand Kaizen is to spread the lean message throughout the company. They learned that having the top people work hands-on in a kaizen was a lot more effective than sitting them down in a big room and subjecting them to a Power Point description of lean.

Getting executives to participate is a great way to have them learn a new way of thinking.

Masco Companies Learn Lean Manufacturing and Improvement Methods

Lean thinking articles

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