Monthly Archives: April 2008

Management Seminar in Colorado

The Deming Institute is sponsoring, How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, 12-14 May, 2008 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Kelly Allan and John Hunter will be presenting the seminar. Please let me know if you sign … Continue reading

Posted in Management | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Post Number 1,000

This is the 1,000th post to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Here are some highlights: Post number 2: Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data – “We use data to act as a proxy for some results of … Continue reading

Posted in curiouscat.com, Deming, Health care, Management, Manufacturing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

2007 Baldrige National Quality Award

The Baldrige National Quality Award winners for 2007 are: PRO-TEC Coating, Leipsic, Ohio (small business) Mercy Health System, Janesville, Wisconsin (health care) Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, California (health care) City of Coral Springs, Coral Springs, Fla. (nonprofit) U.S. Army Armament … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Public Sector | Tagged | 1 Comment

Toyota Canada CIO on Genchi Genbutsu and Kaizen

What’s driving Toyota Canada’s success? – CIO reveals all for Hao Tien, chief information officer (CIO) at Toyota Canada Inc. those two Japanese phrases – Genchi Genbutsu (go and see) and Kaizen (continuous improvement) really capture it all. … the … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Deming and Performance Appraisal

Guest post by Ron Kingen (originally posted to the Deming Electronic Network) Several weeks ago someone in the DEN list ask what did Dr. Deming recommend about this issue, well I ask that very question of Dr. Deming back in … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Find Joy and Success in Business

David Heinemeier Hansson Talk [the broken link has been removed] at Startup School 2008 (Paul Graham‘s Y-combinator school). It is helpful to appreciate the importance of some simple ideas. Working on web focused businesses people often get carried away with … Continue reading

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Fun, Innovation, IT, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Defect Black Market

The Defect Black Market It all started a week before, when the CTO of Damon’s midsize warehousing and transportation company in Northern California announced an innovative program to motivate employees and boost the quality of their logistics software. For every … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Deming, IT, Management, quote, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Gary Convis is the New CEO of Dana

Another former Toyota USA leader is talking a leading role at another company. Gary Convis from Toyota retired last year. Related: articles by Gary Convis – Toyota Management Speech by Gary Convis – Toyota Management Develops the New Camry – … Continue reading

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems

PBS presents a very nice overview of the heath care systems in Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland in: Sick Around the World. It is a just a surface view of the overall system but even so does a … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, Health care, UK | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #33

Shaun Sayers is hosting Management Improvement Carnival #33 on the Capable blog, some of the highlights include Lean and six sigma at Amazon (by Peter Abilla) a tiny peek inside the quality philosophy of this highly successful but intensely secretive … Continue reading

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