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Ole Miss plans manufacturing center
“We in Mississippi continue to have a larger percentage of our population employed in manufacturing than the country as a whole,” Barbour said. “One way to help our businesses innovate and stay successful is to give them world-class people to employ, whether it’s engineers or business majors or people who work on the line.”
By teaching principles of lean manufacturing, total quality management and just-in-time inventory delivery, the center will produce workers for many sectors including aerospace, electronics, technology and polymer sciences.
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The center’s funding comes from the state’s $323.9 million incentive package for Toyota. The automaker is building a $1.3 billion plant in Blue Springs, about 50 miles from Oxford. Toyota reset the opening of the plant from early 2010 to May 2010 for economic and model-changeover reasons.
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The center will offer four bachelor’s degree programs, two business-related and two engineering-related, all with a manufacturing emphasis. Barbour and Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat will appoint a board to create a curriculum and oversee the center.
“We have completed the building drawings and expect to be receiving bids shortly. I would hope that construction would begin this fall,” Khayat said.
He said he expects 20 to 40 students the first year, with enrollment increasing dramatically in the following years. Most of the initial students likely will switch their majors from engineering or business. The interdisciplinary program will include cooperatives and externships.
“We’re going to see an interesting marriage between engineering and business. We think it will be a model for the future of manufacturing,” Khayat said.
Related: Engineering Innovation for Manufacturing and the Economy - Manufacturing Employee Shortage in Utah - Global Manufacturing Data by Country (Feb 2006 post) - Trends in Manufacturing Jobs
MEMS development in less than half the time by Christopher N. Delametter, Eastman Kodak Company
Related: Design of Experiments articles - Using Design of Experiments - Statistics for Experimenters - Why Use Designed Factorial Experiments? - Kodak Debuts Printers With Inexpensive Cartridges
You can accomplish a great deal by just talking to people. Google Public Relations:
The gBrain extension creates a lot of bookmarks. Several thousands a month. And the Google bookmarks system was never made with this amount in mind. What made things worse (and I didn’t knew that), the bookmarks are connected to the normal web search. Whenever you use the web search, it checks it against your Google bookmarks. You can easily imagine what problems can come up when you have a several 10 or even 100 thousands of bookmarks…
Jeffery also made a few suggestions how the extension could be changed to make use of their Web history service instead of the bookmarks system. This would avoid the scaling problems. I may consider it some day.
But why am I telling this? Because I’m amazed how Google handled this. Instead of just blocking my extension at their side, or sending me a cease and desist letter they contacted me and asked.
Good for Google. I do find it a bit funny they had a lawyer contact the guy but still Google’s reaction was much better than most companies would be. Companies like Google, Amazon, Lego, New York Times are taking advantage of technology to leverage community efforts to improve the value of their service to customers. This is an important innovation management needs to acknowledge and manage. Or you can be like the poorly managed journal publishers or music industry that are destroying their organizations futures.
Related: Funding Google Gadget Development - Innovative Marketing Podcast (Lego) - Innovation at Google
Curious Cat Management Improvement Career Connections provides a source of jobs targeted to those interested in this blog. Take a look at the jobs listed now including: Lean Manager at Erlanger in Kentucky; Senior Lean Six Sigma Specialist at Cooper Crouse-Hinds in New York and CEO of Jefferson State Forest Products in California.
At the recent Deming Seminar in Colorado Springs I met the CEO of upstream21, which owns Jefferson State Forest Products: Bryan Redd. He has a great understanding of how to put Deming and lean manufacturing ideas into practice. Having a boss that is knowledgeable and passionate about the management improvement is a huge plus. I think this is a great opportunity.
So if you are interested in looking at new career opportunities look at the jobs posted on the job board and good luck. And if you have a management improvement opening, go ahead an add the opportunity.
Related: Signs You Have a Great Job, or Not - Deming Companies - Hiring the Right Employees
Here are the blog posts from 3 years ago this month on the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog: From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking - Targets Distorting the System - Dilbert and Deming.
The Dilbert site has learned to take advantage of the web and allow embedding of the strips on blogs and web pages. Good for them, but you really would have thought they would have lead this trend not delayed so long.
An interesting article in this month’s Harvard Business Review looks at the seeming contradictions at Toyota - The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success by Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu
A good explanation of how Toyota avoids the trap of arbitrary numerical goals (Innovation at Toyota).
This is another key point often overlooked. Experimentation is key to gaining knowledge and improving. And they have steadily improved their method of experimentation building on the PDSA/PDCA cycle:
Zipcar is an intriguing idea where you rent cars by the hour. The whole process is a significant change from the previous rental model (gas, parking and insurance included). Zipcar makes deals with local governments to secure zipcar parking near public transportation. They also have deals with universities, apartment buildings and businesses all of which provides a new level of easy customer access with cars available in many locations. The internet is used to schedule and provide up to date information. It is a great idea for those in cities where you can design your life so a car is rarely needed. But having access to a car in those times can be very convenient.
The images show zipcars available near the White House in Washington DC. The White House is in the middle of the bottom of the image (Lafayette Square is immediately north of the White House).
The rates are not cheap when you look at per hour costs. But when you look at replacing the need for a car the savings can be large (if you do not drive too much). And for those that doing without a car is not realistic zipcar can be used for any needs for a second car. It is still a pretty large change in mindset. To try and help people give the idea a try Zipcar is trying the Zipcar Low-Car Diet challenge.
During the month, we’ll ask that you check in and let us know how your diet’s going. You can send us emails, even video clips, to share your thoughts and stories. We’ll post excerpts on our website to help keep everyone motivated!
Related: Traffic Congestion Non-Solution - Airfare Innovation Example - Urban Planning - Deming on Innovation (more…)
There are actually examples of good management by airlines: CEO Flight Attendant - Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes. Here is another one: Hustle & Flow
Alaska’s embrace of the future came out of necessity. By the mid-1990s, it was running out of space to handle its Seattle passengers. “If you came here on a busy day, it was jammed,” White says. A new terminal, though, would have cost around $500 million. Alaska tried self-serve kiosks, but technology alone wasn’t the answer. Kiosks were pushed against the ticket counter, which only further stagnated the flow of passengers.
White assembled a team of employees from across the company to design a better system. It visited theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to see what it could learn. It found less confusion and shorter waits at places where employees were available to direct customers. “Disneyland is great at this,” says Jeff Anderson, a member of White’s skunk works. “They have their people in all the right places.”
Ok, it is a bit hard to understand the “spent more than a decade” line but still there are good ideas here. The article includes several examples of lean thinking, such as:
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Ron Pereira is hosting Management Improvement Carnival #37 on the LSS Academy blog, some of the highlights include:
Photos from my hike in Forest Glen Preserve, Illinois 2 years ago.
Other photos: Kentucky Travelogue - Metropolitan Museum of Art - North Cascades National Park
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“You have to treat your employees like customers”
“There isn’t any customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction,” said Gordon Bethune, the former chief executive of Continental Airlines, and an old friend of Mr. Kelleher’s. “He recognized that good employee relations would affect the bottom line. He knew that having employees who wanted to do a good job would drive revenue and lower costs.
Well said. Related: Focus on Customers and Employees - Airline Quality - Respect for People - Curious Cat Management Improvement Dictionary
Dr. Deming used to using the term continual improvement (rather than continuous improvement) later in his life because that would include continuous and dis-continuous improvement (innovation, etc.). I use continual improvement for that reason also. I think the improvement process
To me, continual improvement encompasses both continuous and discontinuous improvement.
Reflecting on: Continuous Improvement vs. Continual Improvement
Related: Process Improvement and Innovation - Better and Different - Kaizen the Toyota Way - Change is not Improvement - Think Long Term Act Daily - Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone
Sense of Fairness Affects Outlook, Decisions
If people cared only about absolute rewards, then Person B ought to accept whatever Person A offers, because getting even $1 is better than nothing. But experiments show that many people will reject the deal if they feel the first person is dividing the money unfairly.
Related: Obscene CEO Pay - Respect for People and Understanding Psychology - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - The Illusion of Understanding - The Psychology of Too Much Choice
Hard to find a job, but not an internship
“Students are looking for internships even after their first year,” said Sheila Curran, executive director of Duke University’s career center, noting that 88% of Duke students graduate with at least one internship under their belts. “It’s become expected that you’d have at least one internship during college.”
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Universities are also recognizing the increased importance of internships and are working harder to secure spots for their students, said Richard Bottner, founder of Intern Bridge, a college recruiting research and consulting firm. Some colleges are even requiring students to do at least one internship to graduate.
The Deming Scholars MBA program at Fordham includes a heavy dose of internships (”Subject matter is delivered in five integrated learning cycles. Five eight-week sessions of classroom lectures, seminars and study are linked by seven-week internships at participating firms”). Integrating well planned internships can be very valuable to improving learning. By the way if your company would like to host these students you can contact the program to discuss the opportunity.
Curiouscat.com has a web site for locating internships. I would love to get some good management improvement based internships added - there is no charge to add internships. For actual jobs try the Curious Cat Management Improvement job board.
Related: Hiring the Right Employees - IT Talent Shortage, or Management Failure? - Young IT Workers Demands - Joel Management - The Joy of Work
Gordon England, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, signed a directive establishing policy and assigning responsibilities to institutionalize the effort throughout DoD. See a webcast of his speech on lean six sigma to a DoD conference on continuous process improvement.
Leading Business Transformation the “Lean” Way
Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) joined with Raytheon to complete an LSS project, which ultimately saved $133.5M across the 2006 FYDP and $421M over the life of the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) Block II program. The integrated product team developed a three-tier approach to reducing weapon unit cost over a two-year period. Success of the JSOW program has led to development of a follow-on Block III weapon system.
The Marine Corps is applying LSS concepts, analytic techniques, and tools to improve the process for identifying, evaluating and acquiring critically needed warfighting equipment. Initial analysis focused on the evaluation stage, where improvements reduced the time required for this step by 35% – from 131 days to 85 days – and identified savings valued at $135K per year.
The first LSS initiative for Army aviation scheduled maintenance was deemed a success and signals a more efficient future for maintaining the Fort Rucker helicopter fleet. More than 32 days of scheduled maintenance were saved during the first LSS effort for Aviation Unit Maintenance involving UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter scheduled maintenance. The first helicopter inducted into the newly developed process was returned to flying status in just 18 days, which included a four-day break for the Fourth of July weekend. That is a 67% improvement in phase flow efficiency from the previous average time of more than 50 days of phase cycle maintenance for the UH-60.
See: online six sigma resources and lean manufacturing resources from the Curious Cat management improvement web site.
Related: Government Lean Six Sigma - Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site - Transformation Through Lean Six Sigma - Army Business Transformation - History Of Quality Management Online - More Lean Government - Army Lean Six Sigma
Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin by William G. Hunter, Jan O’Neill, and Carol Wallen, June 1986.
I have previously written about the ethically challenged companies that claim they are not American to avoid paying the taxes that they owe. For some reason the executives, often seem to stay in the USA though? It is sad that such behavior is tolerated.
10 Big Businesses That Have Moved Their Headquarters Abroad to Pay Less U.S. Taxes
Yes the same company taking billions in Pentagon no-bid contracts (Company Official Defends No-Bid Army Contract - Halliburton Contract Critic Loses Her Job - Halliburton’s Fleecing Ends — Or Does It?).
And that isn’t all - read this on how they don’t pay social security or unemployment… taxes since they are not an American company when they hire American’s to work for the US government in Iraq. Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore - “Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.”
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In the webcast Dean Kamen discusses his latest innovation: robotic arms for people (amazing stuff). Once again he is doing great stuff. It is great what engineers can do (many worked together to get the progress so far) when given the opportunity. We need many more such efforts.
The research was funded by DARPA. DARPA, for those that don’t know, also made reading this blog possible. They funded the development of the internet. I was giving a talk, while I was working for the Office of Secretary of Defense Quality Management Office, on Using Quality to Develop an Internet Resource (back before blogs, but after the web, in 1999). I was trimming things as I spoke and cut the tidbit about DARPA and the internet because I figured everyone already knew that (and I had to trim as I was speaking). In discussions afterwards I found many didn’t know DARPA’s involvement.
Related: Better and Different - Water and Electricity for All - Google Innovation
Dean Kamen Lends a Hand, or Two (August 2007):
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Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.
1. They made this call on their own.
2. They broke the rules that should be broken
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