Danaher – Lean Thinking

A Dynamo Called Danaher [the broken link was removed]

DBS, as it’s called, is a set of management tools borrowed liberally from the famed Toyota Production System. In essence, it requires every employee, from the janitor to the president, to find ways every day to improve the way work gets done. Such quality-improvement programs and lean manufacturing methods have been de rigueur for manufacturers for years. The difference at Danaher: The company started lean in 1987, one of the earliest U.S. companies to do so, and it has maintained a cultish devotion to making it pay off.

Short term lean thinking payoffs are nice, but the long term benefits are much more powerful.

Over 20 years, it has returned a remarkable 25% to shareholders annually, far better than GE (16%), Berkshire Hathaway (21%), or the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (12%).Over 20 years, it has returned a remarkable 25% to shareholders annually, far better than GE (16%), Berkshire Hathaway (21%), or the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (12%).

Related: Danaher’s Low Profile Lean ExcellenceLean Bloglean manufacturing articles10 Stocks for 10 years update (Danaher was in serious consideration)

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One Response to Danaher – Lean Thinking

  1. Durand says:

    First sorry for my english.

    That doesn’t work. The directors make the necessary for have goods numbers for the central, but the reality it different.

    What I can see is the quality get down, the people was discouraged.

    Normaly we must work with Kanban, but with the lower quality we must make stock of good piece for Japan !!!

    We had calculation for the first past yeld. What i was making had to test. If we had mak the good calculation the result
    at end of the FPY be loxer than 60%. So at the begining we mked calculation of the FPY only on the second test.
    Next the direction take the desision to remove the first test for to hide the problem to the corporate !!!

    The result of “application” of DBS’s tools was like the history of the cat in China : Wat’s better : to have a white cat
    cat (who dont take mouses) like the theory says or any other cat but who take the mouses ?

    The answer I see is : have a white cat, so the direction don’t risk to loose his job !

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