Root Cause Analysis

Posted on August 17, 2006  Comments (1)

Nice post on Root Cause Analysis:

This, more rigorous and long-lasting, approach to solving problems is called Root Cause Analysis. There are several tools that can aid in the process of Root Cause Analysis. One common tool developed by Toyota is called “5-why’s”. Basically, it is a simple approach of asking “why” several times until you arrive at an atomic but actionable item. To visually view the process of the “5-why’s”, a tool called an (Ishikawa Diagram) or a (Cause-and-Effect Diagram) or a (Fishbone Diagram) is often helpful — this tool is referred by either of these.

Google Videocasts on Customer Focus

Posted on August 17, 2006  Comments (1)

Google provides video webcasts of speakers that present at Google. These videos offer a great way to take part in one aspect of work at Googleplexs.

Customer Centric Web Decision Making (videocast) by Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor – his blog)

How can we better understand customers? by Ely Dahan (related papers by him: The Predictive Power of Internet-Based Product Concept Testing Using Visual Depiction and Animation, The Virtual Customer)

More Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog post relating to customer focus.

Toyota Management Develops the New Camry

Posted on August 17, 2006  Comments (2)

Toyota’s Globalization Takes Shape through the Camry, speech by Gary Convis:

So, even though I accept Mr. Friedman’s point that our world is quickly changing, I also believe many of our age-old principles will continue to apply. Principles like quality… value… trust in products… and running your business with innovation… teamwork… and continuous improvement.

So true, see: New Rules for Management? No!. The desire to act as if we have new watersheds every year is misguided and is an ineffective view for managers. Managers should understand that the “new ideas” presented in magazines and books are very rarely new, see: (Quality and Innovation). Managers should study the great amount of excellent thought on management that has existed for decades and continues to be the best guidance. New twists on old ideas are worthwhile and the rare new good ideas are also great. But managers are better off if they understand the best old ideas and the they can incorporate new twists instead of just accepting a new superficial fad.
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Patent Review Innovation

Posted on August 16, 2006  Comments (2)

Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved.

A recent article from Money offers an interesting idea (to try anyway) for one part of the problem. Patent review goes Wiki

That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light. The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval process.

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Manufacturing Value Added Economic Data

Posted on August 16, 2006  Comments (3)

In our post on Manufacturing and the Economy we examined global manufacturing value added economic data. The World Bank has provided updated data, for 2002, which we provide below. In, Global Manufacturing Data by Country, we explored data from the United Nations through 2004 (on a related, but different, measure of manufacturing).

Country 1990 2001 2002 1990-2002% increase*
United States 1,040,600 1,422,999 1,463,300 41
Japan 810,231 865,809 811,829 0
China 116,572 407,513 No Data 250
Germany 456,405 385,923 410,644 -10
United Kingdom 206,718 220,429 No Data 7
France 228,270 217,534 192,279 -16
Italy 247,914 203,248 216,177 -13
Korea 64,604 117,575 129,449 100
Mexico 49,992 110,381 110,667 121
India 48,807 67,143 72,681 49
World 4,412,837 5,404,373 5,446,980 23

* 1990-2001 increase if no 2002 data available.
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Google Management

Posted on August 15, 2006  Comments (1)

Management à la Google by Gary Hamel

This short article makes some interesting points, definitely worth a read.

Google has invested heavily in building a highly transparent organization that makes it easy to share ideas, poll peers, recruit volunteers, and build natural constituencies for change. Every project team, and there are hundreds, maintains a Web site that is continuously monitored for peer feedback. In this way, unorthodox ideas have the chance to accumulate peer support — or not — before they get pummeled by the higher-ups. It also helps that Google is organized like the Internet itself: tightly connected, flat and meritocratic. Half of its employees — all those involved in product development — work in pint-sized teams, with an average of three or four engineers per team. Product managers typically have 50+ direct reports, making it hard for supervisors to micromanage. Critically, control is more peer-to-peer than manager-to-minion.

More blog posts on Google Management.
Books and articles by Gary Hamel.
Google Tech Talks – web videos of engineering talks at Google.

Call for Papers on Deming Management

Posted on August 14, 2006  Comments (0)

The Deming Research Seminar is accepting paper through October 2nd for presentation at the 13th annual seminar in New York City Feb 12th and 13th, 2007. To be considered, papers must be original work. Proposals of 200 words or less are due by 2 October 2006. For more information about submitting a paper see the Deming Institute website.

Papers that link Dr. Deming’s work to the academic literature or to the works of other great thinkers are particularly sought, as are papers that extend or expand Dr. Deming’s work, and those that describe applications of Dr. Deming’s management ideas in organizations.

The Annual Research Seminar brings together people from around the world, and from a variety of specialties, to develop an understanding of Dr. Deming’s theories in a wide-ranging context. See a list of topics and speakers from the last Research Seminar.

See our calendar of management improvement conference and seminars.

Eliminate Slogans

Posted on August 13, 2006  Comments (2)

De-motivation Poster

This poster may do a better job, than my posts, of showing why posters and slogan are not an effective management strategy. Text from the poster: “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.”

Despair (link to the motivation poster shown here), offers many such de-motivational posters and note cards – well done satire, in my opinion, but they might be too much for some.

Along the lines of our post, Stop Demotivating Employees, the founder of Despair wrote a book entitled: The Art of Demotivation.

Another poster example: Ambition – The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.

One of Deming’s 14 obligations of management was to eliminate slogans.

Also see:

Related: Why Extrinsic Motivation Fails – Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation – Alfie Kohn has some great books and articles on the problems with extrinsic motivation

10 Kaizen Tips

Posted on August 12, 2006  Comments (0)

Kaizen Hot-Wash

Lesson 6. Pick the right lean tool for the job and use it well.
There are plenty of lean tools to choose for kaizen activities so your MUST determine the right tool and use it well. In our case, the spaghetti diagram was the best tool. It was simple to use although extremely time consuming for the large amount of travel in our process. The spaghetti diagram quickly showed the team the best areas for opportunity and was a great visual for comparison of layout options.

Lean Concepts and Tools:

Teach, Write and Live Quality

Posted on August 11, 2006  Comments (1)

Teach, Write and Live Quality by Michelle Bangert

Quality Magazine’s inaugural Quality Professional of the Year, Roderick A. Munro, Ph.D.:

He also had the privilege of joining the Deming Study Group of Greater Detroit. “It was such an honor for me,” Munro says. The Deming Study group of Greater Detroit met every other month for almost three years. Eight people approached Deming about starting the group, and they could invite up to two others. One of the members invited Munro, but Munro initially did not think he was at that level. After the member insisted, Munro just asked when and where: “I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth,” Munro says. Dr. W. Edwards Deming let the group do most of the talking. “He would pose questions and let us just go at it,” Munro recalls. “Dr. Deming had so much experience, lifetime applications, so much else. He didn’t have time for managers who weren’t open-minded.”

Competition

Posted on August 11, 2006  Comments (0)

Why I hate programming competitions by Mike Vanier

Most aspects of Deming’s thinking seemed natural to me from the start. Some ideas have taken longer (it took me awhile to be won over to the harm caused by performance appraisals, for example). Competition is another area that I still struggle with. I have been moved greatly by my experience and the thoughts of people like Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition). But I still hold more promise for some aspects of competition and I hold less concern than some about other aspects of competition. Still I agree that there is a good deal to learn about the dangers of competition which often creates havoc within a system.

As someone who loves programming and cares very deeply about teaching programming to undergraduates, I would like to express my opinions on why programming competitions are (for the most part) a bad thing, and on what I’d rather see in place of them that might serve the same end, but would more accurately reflect the bigger picture of what it means to be a good programmer.

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Lean Health Care Works

Posted on August 10, 2006  Comments (0)

Lean Health Care? It Works! by Patricia Panchak

In 1971, the U.S. spent 7.5% of its gross national product on health care — about $75 billion. We now spend 14.5%, which is about $1.3 trillion.

The article was written in 2003, by 2005 health care spending reached 15.3% of the USA economy.

A group of Iowa manufacturing executives has already taken Jimmerson’s recommendation a few steps further: They’re teaming up with their health-care providers, showing them the benefits, educating them on the principles and practices, and helping them to implement lean. “We’re doing this with the hopes that somewhere along the line, we’re going to save some money and that maybe our health-care costs won’t be so astronomical,” says David Speer, director of LeanSigma at Maytag Appliances, Newton, Iowa.

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Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation

Posted on August 10, 2006  Comments (5)

The Econ 101 Management Method by Joel Spolsky. Once again Joel presents interesting ideas very well – past posts referencing Joel.

But when you offer people money to do things that they wanted to do, anyway, they suffer from something called the Overjustification Effect. “I must be writing bug-free code because I like the money I get for it,” they think, and the extrinsic motivation displaces the intrinsic motivation. Since extrinsic motivation is a much weaker effect, the net result is that you’ve actually reduced their desire to do a good job.

Alfie Kohn has some great books and articles on this, and related ideas – I know it is hard for many people to believe (the link provides some online articles that can help as well as some books).
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Toyota Supplier Relations

Posted on August 9, 2006  Comments (0)

Toyota’s relationship with vendors is an important link in its success by John Torinus, CEO of Serigraph:

One of the big differentiators between how the Big Three operate and how the vaunted Toyota production system works is how they deal with suppliers. Toyota takes the stance that it competes supply chain against supply chain, so it works hand-in-hand with vendors. It’s not just what happens in its body and assembly plants.

Taiichi Ohno, the production guru at Toyota, put it this way: “Achievement of business performance by the parent company through bullying suppliers is totally alien to the spirit of the Toyota production system.”

Interviews with Innovators

Posted on August 9, 2006  Comments (0)

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston is an interesting looking book to be published in a few months. The book consists of interviews with founders of technology companies exploring the initial efforts to create a new company.

Interviews include: David Heinemeier Hansson (who many of our readers may not have heard of but who has recently done a great web development framework [Ruby on Rails] and development philosophy very compatable with lean thinking), Evan Williams (founder of blogger), Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Joel Spolsky (who we have referenced in various posts), Ray Ozzie, Paul Graham and many more. The interview of Steve Wozniak is available online:
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Management Improvement Conferences

Posted on August 8, 2006  Comments (0)

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar includes several interesting conferences and seminars taking place the rest of this year including:

Open Salary

Posted on August 8, 2006  Comments (0)

Why Secret Salaries are a Baaaaaad Idea

This post raises some interesting points. I am too tied to my old way of thinking so it seems like a scary idea, but I would be willing to consider the idea of making salaries public.

And here’s the problem: If Johnson’s salary is (unfairly) higher than mine, and secret, I can’t complain to my manager about it because I can’t admit that I know about it. When a company sets up a situation where people can see the unfairness but can’t address it directly, or even discuss it openly, they’re rigging the system for maximum frustration.

After reading the original post would you be willing to consider the idea, or does it still seem like just a plain bad idea?

Toyota Production System History

Posted on August 7, 2006  Comments (0)

Norman Bodek on TPS history: Who Can Shout Louder?

TPS focuses on improving the overall process from the customer’s demands to the delivery of the product. Prior to TPS, manufacturing companies were filled with smoke stakes, operational centers separated by machine types: the stamping machines, lathes, drilling, milling etc. each producing mountains of inventory taking weeks even months to produce an automobile. TPS focused on eliminating the wastes created by these separate machine centers. TPS primarily focuses on improving the overall process as opposed to the old way of improving the efficiency of each operational center without consideration of the overall flow.

This article continues the chain of articles on the topic – last month: Origins of the Toyota Production System.

Profits and a Better World

Posted on August 5, 2006  Comments (0)

I like this post in response to a comment I sent to the Small Business Daily Buzz blog: More Deming Management Resources:

Deming saw it differently: he felt that businesses could improve the world and still earn profits.
…
I wish every business course taught that profit and good citizenship are not mutually exclusive, but rather highly complimentary.

Vacation: Systems Thinking

Posted on August 4, 2006  Comments (2)

There’s more vacation time on tap for you (in the USA) by Chris Taylor:

U.S. employees are taking less time off than ever: Not only is the average number of annual vacation days granted to them a mere 12.4 – less than that of the average medieval peasant – but more than a third of us don’t even use all of our allotted time off.

While a dramatic contrast, I don’t really believe it is accurate. I believe workers in the USA get 8 to 10 paid holidays in addition to the 12.4 paid vacation days. Which contrasts with my view of medieval peasants. Part of the vacation issue is a decision, by workers, to seek more pay rather than more vacation. I want to look at the point to some of the organizational issues here though.

Several factors make it desirable to work those you have more. Health care insurance costs are high, if you can get 1900 hours of work a year for the health care premium instead of 1500 hours that can add up to a great deal of savings. Of course if you decrease the health of your workforce, in doing so, that will drive up the costs per worker (but that is one of those unknowable numbers Dr. Deming discussed while the expenditure per worker is easy to see). Read more

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