Monthly Archives: June 2007

Management Improvement Carnival #13

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Outrageously Good Customer Service by Steven Levitt – “I would trade it all for a few more instances in which the airline does something out of the ordinary to get me … Continue reading

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How to Avoid Kaizen

‘Disillusioned’ surgeon quits UK: In the theatre anaesthetists at the James Paget Hospital prepared the next patient while he was operating on another. He said: “I found I was wasting time between operations so I came up with this solution. … Continue reading

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Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay

I continue to tilt at the robber barron CEO pay packages. Hopefully, at some point, the people approving these obscene pay packages can be shamed into stopping or replaced by people with some sense of decency. I was taught in … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Economics, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Awesome CatCam

I posted this to our science and engineering blog last week: Awesome Cat Cam. It doesn’t really have anything to do with management: I suppose I could make a case for creativity… but basically it is just really cool (it … Continue reading

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Continuous, Constructive Feedback

Employee performance: Continuous, constructive feedback yields results [the broken link was removed]: Be specific. If you simply say “Good job, Frank,” Frank won’t know exactly what he did to get that atta boy. Therefore, he can’t consciously work to repeat … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Lean Progress at Label Printing Companies

Continuous Improvement [the broken link was removed], an article from the Label and Narrow Web trade magazine (“for the narrow web segment of converting and printing”), is an article with some nice anecdotes of successfully applying lean thinking. “The dollar … Continue reading

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Bad Management Results in Layoffs

In response to Is Laying People off Really Anti-Lean? [the broken link was removed]: Let’s say you, a Lean enthusiast, are named CEO of a mid sized manufacturing company. Let’s also assume your market has turned down and the constraint … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, quote, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #12

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Employee Driven Improvement at Southwest by Mark Graban – “It’s not called Lean, nor does it reference Toyota, but it sounds like Lean. It’s always nice to see management taking that … Continue reading

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Six Sigma Outdated? No.

Here is another of those articles that promotes the idea that oversimplifies six sigma and then declares that mindset is outdated because innovation is needed nowadays – Six Sigma: So Yesterday? [the link Business Week broke was removed]. The discipline … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Six sigma | Tagged | 1 Comment