Author Archives: John Hunter

Lean Health Care Works

Posted on August 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Health Care? It Works! [the broken link was removed] by Patricia Panchak In 1971, the U.S. spent 7.5% of its gross national product on health care — about $75 billion. We now spend 14.5%, which is about $1.3 trillion. … Continue reading →

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Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation

Posted on August 10, 2006 by John Hunter

The Econ 101 Management Method by Joel Spolsky. Once again Joel presents interesting ideas very well – past posts referencing Joel. But when you offer people money to do things that they wanted to do, anyway, they suffer from something … Continue reading →

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Toyota Supplier Relations

Posted on August 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota’s relationship with vendors is an important link in its success [link broken, so it was removed] by John Torinus, CEO of Serigraph: One of the big differentiators between how the Big Three operate and how the vaunted Toyota production … Continue reading →

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Interviews with Innovators

Posted on August 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston is an interesting looking book to be published in a few months. The book consists of interviews with founders of technology companies exploring the initial efforts to create a … Continue reading →

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Management Improvement Conferences

Posted on August 8, 2006 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Calendar includes several interesting conferences and seminars [the broken link was removed] taking place the rest of this year including: Deming Immersion Program [the broken link was removed] – an opportunity for no more than … Continue reading →

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Open Salary

Posted on August 8, 2006 by John Hunter

Why Secret Salaries are a Baaaaaad Idea This post raises some interesting points. I am too tied to my old way of thinking so it seems like a scary idea, but I would be willing to consider the idea of … Continue reading →

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Toyota Production System History

Posted on August 7, 2006 by John Hunter

Norman Bodek on TPS history: Who Can Shout Louder? [the broken link was removed] TPS focuses on improving the overall process from the customer’s demands to the delivery of the product. Prior to TPS, manufacturing companies were filled with smoke … Continue reading →

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Profits and a Better World

Posted on August 5, 2006 by John Hunter

I like this post in response to a comment I sent to the Small Business Daily Buzz blog: More Deming Management Resources [the broken link was removed]: Deming saw it differently: he felt that businesses could improve the world and … Continue reading →

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Vacation: Systems Thinking

Posted on August 4, 2006 by John Hunter

There’s more vacation time on tap for you (in the USA) by Chris Taylor: U.S. employees are taking less time off than ever: Not only is the average number of annual vacation days granted to them a mere 12.4 – … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Management, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Switching to Lean

Posted on August 3, 2006 by John Hunter

Switching to lean [the broken link was removed] by Vanessa Chris: Since Eaton implemented lean manufacturing practices across its 235 plants in 2003, this facility has ranked number one for three years running. It used Eaton’s eight lean tools — … Continue reading →

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