Jim Press and Toyota, Setting Sights on No. 1 former president of Toyota Motor North America

The Purpose of an Organization as stated by W. Edwards Deming described the purpose of an organization in New Economics, on page 51, as:

This is obviously not the view most people have, but I believe Dr. Deming was right.

Related: Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler - No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota

Copilot is a cool application that lets you control someone else’s computer. So you can receive technical support remotely. You let someone access your computer and copilot takes care of the sometimes very complex task of linking the two computers up (getting through firewalls, etc.). You can use it to fix your parents computer after you move away… or you can can have your kid fix your computer for while you pay for part of their college… (I am not sure which description fits you). Copilot is now free on weekends by Joel Spolsky:

While he doesn’t mention it I am sure they figured out this is a great marketing tool also. If you try this product there is a good chance you will find it very helpful. Fogcreek Software is looking for a Summer interns in NYC. I have posted about Joel many times, including: Management Training Program - Joel Management - The IT Iceberg Secret - Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Related: Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation - engineering internships

dining in 2015

Basically I just think this is cool. I could try and explain how it shows creativity and reducing waste… but really I just like it. From the designer:

The website should link to more designers homepage… It really is time for the linking ability of the web to be used more consistently. Far too often people discuss some person, book, center, term, report… and don’t take advantage of links to add value to the content presented (I don’t know if the designer, kechenyi camille, even has a web site but the failure to provide useful links is a very common waste) so that advice stands whether it is useful in this case or not.

Related: Simple Solutions That Work - Engineering Gadgets and Gifts - Nice Looking Toaster - Cheap Creativity

The In Thinking network offers many great ways to learn. This week they have 4 hour long conference call discussions with Russ Ackoff. Thought Pieces (suggested links to review in preparation for the conference call)
Lecture on “Systems Practice” at Open University (audio file)
Transforming the Systems Movement
A Major Mistake that Managers Make
From Mechanistic to Social Systems Thinking

These four resources are great, even if you are not going to participate in the conference calls.

Related: articles by Russel Ackoff - Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar - Write it Down - Transformation and Redesign - Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management
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Do Lean Companies Create Fewer Jobs?

No, they create more. If you assume the lean company grows sales at the same rate as some poorly management company then it may well be that the lean company creates fewer jobs. However that is not a valid assumption. Deming provided the reason in his presentations to Japan in the 1950’s with his chain reaction. From page 3 of Out of the Crisis

• Improve Quality —>
• Costs decrease because of less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays, snags, better use of machine-time and materials —>
• Productivity Improves —>
• Capture the market with better quality and lower price —>
• Stay in Business —>
• Provide jobs and more jobs

For an example of this process at work see GM, Ford and Toyota. Toyota defines lean (Toyota’s management system is what was called lean manufacturing by Jim Womack and Dan Jones). Toyota continues to add employees while Ford and GM have been shedding jobs.

It is true, for lean (and un-lean) companies alike, productivity is improving (it just improves more at lean companies) which means that fewer people are needed to produce the same amount as we have in the past. We have posted previously about the mistaken belief that jobs are moving overseas.
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Here is updated data from the UN on manufacturing output by country. China continues to grow amazingly moving into second place for 2006. I plan to write more on this data in the Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog. UN Data, in billions of current US dollars:

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I like using Amazon, most of the time. But their decision to erect barriers for communication I find extremely annoying. Any time anything goes wrong you might as well be dealing with some organization in the middle of nowhere without phones, any internet connection or even physical mail. I ordered a printer from them a couple weeks ago. Today I get an email that “the following item from your order is not currently available for purchase. This item has been canceled from your order. If your credit card was charged, a refund has been processed.”

First, it is very lousy service to sell someone something and then figure out you don’t have it to sell a few weeks later. Second, if you find you have done such a lame thing - buy it from someone else and deliver it as promised. Third, don’t make it nearly impossible for the customer you just wronged to contact you. This is the equivalent of providing lousy service and then closing the door in someones face refusing to deal with your failure.

And if you really want your business to take those customer unfriendly actions: just sell stuff you don’t have, then tell people a couple weeks later you are not going to sell it to them after all and then tell them if you charged them (you can’t even bother to see if you did? pretty lame) then you will give them their money back it still makes sense to give them the chance to buy another printer from you instead of just closing the door.

Granted some people are going to decide they don’t want to deal with such bad service and chose to deal with a more customer focused company but some will actually still give you another chance - make it easy for them to buy another printer. For example write them instead of what I received something like: sorry for our bad service, and to show we really mean that (we are not just sending you meaningless drivel our consultant dreamed up to say we care when our actions say we don’t) we will discount a replacement printer you buy in the next two weeks by $50. Here are 5 similar printers. Follow the links to purchase one of these printers (or view many others on our site) and we will also express mail the printer selected at no additional cost.

The sad thing is that there are not many alternatives to Amazon that actually provide good service. Though Crutchfield is one - for electronics.

Related: Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Amazon Innovation - No More Lean Excuses - More Bad Customer Service Examples - 12 Stocks for 10 Years (yes including Amazon)

Another interesting experiment from Google: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google

Interesting paper. I would guess most readers of this blog won’t be able to apply prediction markets to there workplace in the short term but never-the-less I find the paper interesting.

Related: Management is Prediction - Google Experiments Quickly and Often - Secrets of the World’s Best Companies

The Management Improvement Carnival #27 (Best of 2007) has been posted by Ron Pereira. Highlights include:

• 10 Common Misconceptions About Lean Manufacturing: 1. Lean production = volume production. In Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management he suggested that the Toyota system was ideally suited for low volume production, and not as well suited for the higher volume production…
• L.A.M.E. = Lean As Misguidedly Executed: We need a phrase that describes these “bad” or misguided attempts at Lean, things that give Lean a bad name. How about: LAME: “Lean” As Misguidedly Executed.
• Reacting to Visual Cues: The Toyota Production System makes effective use of visual cues to mark location in time and space, boundaries, and to answer the question “How am I doing” in a production setting.
• Dabbawallas, UPS, and FedEx: Mumbai residents rely on an intricately organized, labor-intensive operation that puts some automated high-tech systems to shame.

Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis

Rankings: 1) France 2) Japan 3) Australia 4) Spain 5) Italy 6) Canada… 18) Portugal 19) USA. Maybe the United States is last but still not significantly behind?

It might seem like a stretch to compare the lowest ranked country to the average of the top 3, but, for all those that feel the USA is the best health care system it raises the questions of why they don’t think 100,000 annual deaths is a significant enough problem to lower their opinion of the current system. And remember the USA system costs something like twice as much as the average system: up to 16% of GNP in 2006.

I must say I would rather have the Toyota mindset shown by those talking about the USA health system instead of the claims of how the current USA health system is number 1. In Toyota’s horrible last year they still had a profit of about $14 billion (I believe something like 20 companies have every made that much). The United States health system sure has some things to point to positively but the system seems to be losing ground to the rest of the world more and more quickly while many cling to a belief it is the best system around.

Related: Evidence-based Management - posts on improving health care - Improving Hospital Performance - articles on improvement health care - Best Research University Rankings - Top 10 Manufacturing Countries - Dr. Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases of Western Management

IT talent shortage, or management failure?

Great post. I agree: the main problem is poor management. Dr. Deming kept increasing the percentage of problems due to systemic issues (which are management responsibility to address), he was saying 97% of issues were commons cause problems (from the system) at the end of his life.

So what should managers do? Read the Curious Cat Management Blog and follow the advise in our previous posts, including: Stop Demotivating Employees (IT employees are especially disdainful of pointy haired boss actions that others tolerate more easily) - Signs You Have a Great Job … or Not - Joy in Work for IT - hiring silicon valley style - Bad Management Results in Layoffs

I am reading a fascinating book by Jessica Snyder Sachs: Good Germs, Bad Germs. From page 108:

This is a great example of a positive special cause. How would you identify this? First you would have to stratify the data. It also shows that sometimes looking at the who is important (the problem is just that we far too often look at who instead of the system so at times some get the idea that it is not ok to stratify data based on who - it is just be careful because we often do that when it is not the right approach and we can get fooled by random variation into thinking there is a cause - see the red bead experiment for an example); that it is possible to stratify the data by person to good effect.

The following 20 pages in the book are littered with very interesting details many of which tie to thinking systemically and the perils of optimizing part of the system (both when considering the system to be one person and also when viewing it as society).

I have recently taken to reading more and more about viruses, bacteria, cells, microbiology etc.: it is fascinating stuff.

Related: Science Books by topic - Data Can’t Lie - Understanding Data

New Erie County Government Executive, Chris Collins, discusses the director of six sigma position that will drive their new six sigma efforts.

Related: Six Sigma for Erie County Government - Public Sector Management Improvement Site - Posts on improving management in the Public Sector - management webcasts

Does Your Product Or Service “Just Work”? By Jim Kukral

There is truth to that statement. I think largely due to how bad so many products are - that they don’t actually work. The Kano model of customer satisfaction is an excellent way to view customer expectations.

The Kano model states that you have expected quality - it just does what it needs to (what is expected). Then more is better type - give me more at the same price and I am happier. But where you really want to get as a company is products and services that delight customers.

When you are delighted you are not easy prey to other companies. When you are satisfied you are ready for offers that say we will give it to you a bit cheaper or give you a bit more. But if you are delighted you don’t want to leave and instead are telling everyone you know how great this product or service is.

I think it might be that in many cases now people are delighted if things just work. Perhaps they have become so disillusioned that something actually working is delightful - I think there is real truth here. Which shows how much room there is to improve. It is such a huge bother to deal with junk that doesn’t work and the thought of dealing with the lousy service on such failures is enough to drive them to tears.

Related: What Job Does Your Product Do? - Quality Customer Focus - Ritz Carlton and Home Depot - Good Customer Service Example - Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service - More Bad Customer Service Examples

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.

• Lean and waiting by Aza Badurdeen - “Carefully mapping and identifying the value stream will make it possible to identify wastes in the office (or in your service). When these are identified we can remove these wastes from the system.”
• Happy Employees Create Value by Kevin Meyer - People have creativity, knowledge, experience, and ideas that can create value that doesn’t land on a traditional P&L. Hotelier Joie de Vivre does understand that oft-hidden but still real value.
• Everything You Will Ever Need To Know About Business - “Also included is a personal note: ‘I’ve included an additional FREE book by the same author. Thanks for your order.’ I smile.
• Womack on Respect for People by Mark Graban - “For anyone who thought ‘respect for people’ meant ‘being nice all the time,’ I hope Jim’s letter helps clarify the true difference.” (Curious Cat on respect for people circa 2006)
• Ten Things Our Sensei Told Us by Kiki Risyandi - “Lean is about managing the value that your deliver to your customers so that all the elements of delivering that value work together in a seamless, coordinated fashion and driving through the organization horizontally instead of vertically.”
• Sports ‘randomination’? by Mark J. Anderson - “From the knowledge gained from this experiment and other strategic moves, our team of techies went on to win our Class D league the following season.”

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