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Lean Manufacturing Category

Lean thinking, lean manufacturing, Toyota Production System management and manufacturing thinking. See our lean management portal, inlcuding lean articles (articles by Jim Womack) and online resource.
Terms: continuous flow - kaizen, jidoka, JIT, muda, mistake proofing, takt time, more
Recommended posts: Respect for People - Lean Thinking and Management - The Lion of Lean - Visible Data - Bad Management Results in Layoffs

June 30, 2009

Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair

Toyota has developed a thought-controlled wheelchair (along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute). Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Both companies continue to invest in innovation and science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. In my opinion the more important story is why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now. And that story is based on their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.

Yes Toyota can improve their performance, based on the last few years. Does management understand what they need to do? I think so. Does management understand that the system needs to be improved rather than the numbers on the spreadsheets of various managers have to be made better? I think so. Do I think most companies today, with bad results, understand the difference between bad numbers on spreadsheets that are used to judge various managers and a system that needs to be improved? No.

I do not believe the bad earnings for the last year for Toyota are indicative of a failed system. The results do show a weakness in the Toyota system that allowed them to perform this poorly during this credit crisis. The risk to Toyota’s future is that they become too focused on short term results, mistakenly thinking the problem to be fixed in the bad quarterly results recently. They need to focus on improving the system for the long term. And the recent experience likely shows some areas that need to be improved. But in no way do the fundamental tenants of the management system need to be changed. For many other companies today, changing fundamental aspects of their management is what is needed.

Related: Toyota as Homebuilder - Honda’s Robolegs Help People Walk - Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year - Toyota’s Partner Robot - NUMMI, and GM’s Failure to Manage Effectively - Toyota iUnit - Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company by William Hunter, 1986
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April 13, 2009

Building a Great Workforce

How P&G Finds and Keeps a Prized Workforce by Roger O. Crockett

“We actually recruit for values,” says Chief Operating Officer Robert McDonald. “If you are not inspired to improve lives, this isn’t the company you want to work for.”

The P&G strategy starts on college campuses. The Cincinnati company dispatches line managers rather than human resource staffers to do much of its recruiting.

For the few who get hired, their work life becomes a career-long development process. At every level, P&G has a different “college” to train individuals, and every department has its own “university.” The general manager’s college, which McDonald leads, holds a week-long school term once a year when there are a handful of newly promoted managers. Further training—there are nearly 50 courses—helps managers with technical writing or financial analysis.

Career education takes place outside the classroom, too. P&G pushes every general manager to log at least one foreign assignment of three to five years. Even high-ranking employees visit the homes of consumers to watch how they cook, clean, and generally live, in a practice dubbed “live it, work it.” Managers also visit retail stores, occasionally even scanning and bagging items at checkout lanes, to learn more about customers.

Going to visit the gemba, the actual place is incredibly important, and far too often ignored by managers today.

The emphasis on life long learning (in practice, not just words) is also very wise. In my experience far to little emphasis is placed on continual improvement of what many companies will say is their most important asset: their people. If you don’t invest in education of your staff that is going to harm your long term success. The investment P&G makes shows a respect for people.

Related: Jeff Bezos Spends a Week Working in Amazon’s Kentucky Distribution Center - Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno - Respect for People, Understanding Psychology - Ohno Circle
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April 2, 2009

The Importance of Making Problems Visible

Great, short, presentation webcast by Jason Yip showing the importance of making problems visible. Anyone interested in software development should watch this, and it is valuable for everyone else, also. Great visuals.

Related: Future Directions for Agile Management - Agile Software Development Slideshow - Leading Lean: Missed Opportunity - Information Technology and Management - Curious Cat Micro-financiers - posts on project management - Toyota Institute for Managers

March 28, 2009

Jeff Bezos Spends a Week Working in Amazon’s Kentucky Distribution Center

Photo of Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEOPhoto of Jeff Bezos during the 2005 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference by James Duncan.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, is working for a week in Amazon’s Kentucky distribution center. I hope, and based on his past, I believe, that he is going to the gemba (Genchi Genbutsu) to learn more about how Amazon operates. That would be great.

He worked on wall street and understands the fake constraints they attempt to put companies (you must focus on short term profits, you must focus on pleasing wall street analysts not customers…). He understood the importance of managing cash flow and the unimportance of short term profits. And he understands the importance of customer focus. He understands lean thinking. We need more CEO’s like him.

Amazon CEO comes to Lexington

“Thanks so much for your interest in speaking with our CEO Jeff Bezos,” said spokeswoman Patty Smith. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to arrange any interviews or photos this week while he is in Lexington.

“He is there to work,” Smith said, “and, unfortunately, we are just not scheduling any interviews while he is in town.”

Local Amazon employees say Bezos is working in the warehouse with the company’s hourly employees to see what they do and hear their comments about their work. Most CEOs would benefit from spending a few days on the shop floor.

Once again his actions indicate he is the type of CEO I want to invest in.

via: Jeff Bezos Works In Kentucky Distribution Center For A Week

Related: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis - Management by Walking Around - Amazon Innovation - Amazon’s Amazing Achievement - Louisville Slugger, Deming Practices - Management Excellence

February 25, 2009

NUMMI, and GM’s Failure to Manage Effectively

Gipsie Ranney recently sent me an article on her thoughts on NUMMI and the current problems with the Big Three car makers to post to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library. NUMMI is the plant that Toyota and General Motors run together as a joint venture. The article is excellent.

The answer to a question asked by someone else on the tour was stunning to me. The person asked what kind of computerized inventory system they had at NUMMI. The leader of the tour at the time – a materials management person – responded, “we don’t have one; the Japanese say that computerized inventory systems lie.”

The most remarkable insight I gained at NUMMI came as an answer to a question from a member of the touring group. The person asked what had been learned about the reasons that management/labor conflict had been reduced so much. The tour guide answered, “The answer we get from members of the labor force is that the Japanese do what they say they will do.” This was the same labor force that had held the record for most grievances filed per year in an assembly plant in the U.S.

The Big Three are responsible for managing their organizations wisely. I think that will take more than money. It will take a different culture and a different mind.

I agree. The problem is that management fails to manage well and has been failing to do so for decades. They have improved over the last few decades but not nearly fast or consistently enough. Gipsie worked closely with Dr. Deming and serves on the W. Edwards Deming Institute Board of Trustees.

Related: Could Toyota Fix GM (2005) - At Ford, Quality Was Our Motto in the 1980s - Big Failed Three, Meet the Successful Eight - Why Fix the Escalator? - Invest in New Management Methods Not a Failing Company (AMC) by William Hunter, 1986 - Ford and Managing the Supplier Relationship - No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota

February 18, 2009

Zara Thrives by Ignoring Conventional Wisdom

Zara Thrives by Breaking All the Rules

Many U.S. apparel retailers are choking on slow-moving inventories as consumers hold back on spending. But Spain’s Inditex, whose Zara chain pioneered cheap chic, is zipping ahead. The $13.8 billion company, which is closing in on Gap (GPS) for the title of world’s biggest clothing retailer, has nearly quadrupled sales, profits, and locations since 2000

Wages are higher at Inditex—its factory workers in Spain make an average of $1,650 a month, vs. $206 in China’s Guandong Province. But the company saves time and money on shipping. Also, Inditex’s plants use just-in-time systems developed in cooperation with logistics experts from Toyota Motor (TM), which gives the company a level of control that would be impossible if it were entirely dependent on outsiders.

In addition, Inditex supplies every market from warehouses in Spain. Even so, it manages to get new merchandise to European stores within 24 hours, and, by flying goods via commercial airliners, to stores in the Americas and Asia in 48 hours or less.

As a result, the chain doesn’t have to slash prices by 50%, as rivals often do, to move mass quantities of out-of-season stock. Since the chain is more attuned to the most current looks, it also can get away with charging more than, say, Gap. “If you produce what the street is already wearing, you minimize fashion risk,”

For rivals hoping to mimic Inditex’s results, analyst Luca Solca of Sanford C. Bernstein has a bit of advice: Don’t follow the Zara pattern halfheartedly. “The Inditex way is an all-or-nothing proposition that has to be fully embraced to yield results.”

Very true. Processes work well within a system. You can’t copy from one system to another. You can learn about what has been successful and figure out how you can adapt to take advantage of the ideas within your systems.

Related: Lean IT Systems - Not ERP - Systemic Thinking - What Kind of Management Does This? - Making Suits in the USA - Curious Cat Management on Lean Thinking

February 8, 2009

Lean Thinking in Minnesota Government

The Office of Governor Pawlenty issued a press release on Minnesota’s Drive to Excellence effort:

Increased Quality via Lean Continuous Improvement Reform – The State has adopted
“Lean Thinking” as its preferred process improvement tool. So far, 18 agencies are actively
involved, with 302 staff members participating in 38 Kaizen improvement events. These
events have yielded significant improvements in the delivery of state government services,
from issuing duplicate birth certificates to processing State Soldiers Assistance requests.

The Drive to Excellence includes 15 specific projects for reforming state government, ranging
from strategic procurement to a Lean continuous improvement effort and the reform of state grants
management. The projects focus on improving quality and customer service and reducing costs in
the delivery of government services to citizens.

Read about more public sector management improvement efforts on my Public Sector Continuous Improvement Site.

Related: Six Sigma In New York Local Government - Transformation and Redesign at the White House - The Georgetown Kentucky Way - Public Sector Management

December 30, 2008

Cost Cutting is Much Different than Waste Removal

Cost Cutting is Much Different than Waste Removal by Jim Womack

The very last thing to consider is the one thing managers seem to embrace most readily: cost cutting. This means leaving out steps and features that actually create value from the perspective of the customer and removing employees who are actually needed to get the job done right using the current process. The hope, usually wrong, is that the customer won’t notice.

This last expedient is the one I most fear, because it is likely to be justified in the name of “lean.” Every recession seems to produce a major cost-cutting campaign sold by traditional consultants. Their key promise is rapid financial payback, even within one quarter, and the only practical way to achieve this is layoffs. I truly hope that the recession of 2009 will not be known to history as the “lean” recession and everyone in the Lean Community should vow to avoid the cost-cutting urge in their own organization.

To avoid the need for cost cutting, I hope that every would-be lean enterprise will assign someone responsibility for developing a “recession A3″ that carefully reviews the background situation. The critical step in the A3 process will then be to develop a set of countermeasures that can protect the organization and its people through the current recession while laying the ground work for a sustainable lean enterprise in the future.

Related: Operational Excellence - Going lean Brings Long-term Payoffs - Bad Management Results in Layoffs - Cutting Hours Instead of People

November 25, 2008

Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year

Engineers Rule, 2006

Longtime auto analyst John Casesa, who now runs a consulting company, says, “There’s not a company on earth that better understands the culture of engineering.” The strategy has worked thus far. Honda has never had an unprofitable year. It has never had to lay off employees.

The lean and compact Fukui, like all of his predecessors, is an engineer who started in R&D and later ran the subsidiary. While other auto chief-executives-to-be were punching keyboards in an accounting office, Fukui ran the company’s motorcycle racing operations. He’s still racing. He hikes the stairs to his tenth-floor desk–tenth floor so he’s in the middle of things at Honda’s 16-story Tokyo headquarters and a desk because executives at Honda don’t have offices. Honda doesn’t disclose executive pay in detail, but the sum of salaries and bonuses that Fukui shares with 36 board members, $13 million, is just about enough for the boss at a big American company.

I checked and Honda was also profitable in 2007 and 2008 fiscal year (ending in September) and no I see no evidence of any layoffs this year (when I look online).

Related: Honda Engineering - Back to School for Honda Workers, 1993 - The Google Way: Give Engineers Room - Google’s Ten Golden Rules - Toyota as Homebuilder - Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog - Toyota’s CEO pay under $1 million

Of all the bizarre subsidiaries that big companies can find themselves with, Harmony Agricultural Products, founded and owned by Honda Motor, is one of the strangest. This small company near Marysville, Ohio produces soybeans for tofu. Soybeans? Honda couldn’t brook the sight of the shipping containers that brought parts from Japan to its nearby auto factories returning empty. So Harmony now ships 33,000 pounds of soybeans to Japan. An inveterate tinkerer, Honda also set up a center nearby to develop better soybean varieties and improve agricultural processes.
November 15, 2008

Lean and Kanban for Software Developers

Lean and Kanban for Software Developers by Clinton Keith

Time-boxing allows us to employ a very powerful aspect of Kanban. The cards in each column represent capacity for each stage of the value stream. As we see above, each stage can only handle one zone at a time. That is the capacity of each stage, if we have one person working at each stage.

Time-boxing is the first step in beginning to find a balanced flow for our value stream as visualized on our Heijunka board. However, one problem exists. Each stage of effort in the stream will require a different length time-box. This can cause gaps and pileups.

For example, if our level designer can lay out a level in a week, but the high res artist requires two weeks, then a lot of work can pileup for the high res artist. Conversely, if the concept artist requires two weeks to complete the concept art for each zone, the level designer might be waiting for work with nothing to do. We have to find ways to balance this workflow smoothly so that everyone has work to do every day. One way of doing this is to balance the effort on each stage to achieve the same flow through the system.

Related: Lean, Toyota and Deming for Software Development - Kanban In Software Engineering - A Programmers Take on Agile Software Development - Agile Software Development - Six Sigma in Software Development - Curious Cat Management Improvement library

October 12, 2008

Idle Workers Busy at Toyota

Idle Workers Busy at Toyota

Instead of sending the workers home, as the Detroit makers often do, Toyota is keeping them at the plants, though. The employees spend their days in training sessions designed to sharpen their job skills and find better ways to assemble vehicles.

At its Princeton plant, by contrast, Toyota is using the down time to hone its workers’ quality-control and productivity skills. The company has pledged never to lay off any of its full-time employees, who are nonunion.

Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, the company’s U.S. sales unit, said the company believes keeping employees on the payroll and using the time to improve their capabilities is the best move in the long run. “It would have been crazy for us to lose people for 90 days and [then] to rehire and retrain people and hope that we have a smooth ramp-up coming back in,” Mr. Lentz said.

In Princeton, senior plant manager Norm Bafunno said he can already see the benefits of the training. Mr. Bafunno cites a Teflon ring designed by an assembly worker during the down time that helps prevent paint damage when employees install an electrical switch on the edge of a vehicle’s door.

Mr. Mason, a 40-year-old former firefighter, added: “One of the major things that everyone is grateful for is that they thought enough of us to keep us here.”

Toyota continues to show intelligence, long term thinking, respect for people… in their management decisions. I worry they may capitulate and make explanations about how the economy forced them to abandon their principles. I hope they prove that cynical fear in me to be wrong, in their case.

Related: Bad Management Results in Layoffs - Toyota Management Not Close to Being Duplicated - Toyota’s Commitment to Customers - People are Our Most Important Asset - Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler

September 20, 2008

Guess What? Manufacturing in the USA is a Good Idea

More people learning about manufacturing truths lean thinkers have known for a long time. Made (again) in America

Thomasville Furniture and Exxel Outdoors, a maker of camping gear, have both said they now are making products in the U.S. that they once outsourced to China; both have attributed the move to the soaring cost of transporting goods.

But other longtime outsourcers, such as Regal Ware Inc., a 500-employee maker of high-end cookware (sets go for as much as $4,000), have discovered that manufacturing abroad has another drawback: it isn’t nearly as efficient as they had hoped.

“We either had too much inventory, or not enough” of the products Regal Ware outsourced to China, says Jeffrey Reigle, CEO of the Kewaskum, Wisc.-based company. “We figured there had to be a better way.”

The better way, it turns out, proved to be right under his nose, at two Wisconsin plants where Regal Ware has produced stainless steel pots and pans for more than 50 years.

Learn more about lean manufacturing.

Related: Lean Manufacturing Saving Jobs Again - Made in the USA (2006) - Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno - New Look American Manufacturing - Wisconsin Manufacturing

September 18, 2008

Webcast on the Toyota Development Process

Kenji Hiranabe talks about Toyota’s development process (webcast). Kenji shares a presentation he attended earlier this year by Nobuaki Katayama, a former Chief Engineer at Toyota, and the lessons he learned from him.

The webcast takes awhile to get going. If you are impatient you might want to start at the 6 minute mark. Some thoughts from the talk:

  • Voice of the Customer is diffuse. A strong concept (for a project - new car for example) is very important to focus thought, listening to voice of the customer is important but must use strong concept to avoid losing focus (due to diffuse customer feedback).
  • Honest face to face communication is important. Bad news first - present bad news first [don't try to hide bad news - my thoughts in brackets, John Hunter].
  • Everyone must think about cost reduction, many efforts add up to big impact [the importance of reducing waste everywhere].
  • benchmark, not to copy others, but to learn from what others do well.

The webcast includes a nice (though short) discussion of agile management in software development and lean manufacturing (the different situation of manufacturing versus software development). Kenji Hiranabe has also translated several agile and lean books into Japanese including Implementing Lean Software Development.

Related: Kenji Hiranabe’s blog - Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation - Articles and webcasts by Mary Poppendieck - Future Directions for Agile Management - Interview with Toyota President

August 25, 2008

Future Directions for Agile Management

Agile management (agile software development specifically) is something that makes a big difference in my work life. David Anderson consistently provides great ideas on agile management and he does so again in this 90 minute presentation on the future directions for agile. As I learned about agile software development, what I saw was a great implementation of management improvement practices focused on software development that was very compatible with Deming’s management philosophy and lean thinking practices. The Agile manifesto:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

The first line can seem to be at odds, but I think in practice it is not - though I admit it may seem that way based on the importance placed on process by Deming (I think you have to read on agile to understand why this is the case). For my use of agile software develop, a highlight of the most important ideas is:

  • Deliver working systems quickly (with limited features, add features based on user needs) - [management improvement practice: PDSA, pilot ideas on a small scale, go to the gemba (don't sit in conference rooms talking about what might be an issue for the computer application you want to see in 6 months, create working systems and then continually improve it)]
  • Build systems that cope well with uncertainty and allow for constant continuous improvement of processes (with IT systems that can adjust as needed to changing business conditions and desires) - [continual improvement - what is good enough today is not good enough next year]

Important concepts addressed by agile management: highly collaborative, risk tolerance, systems thinking, customer interaction, craftsmanship ethic [joy in work], eliminate waste. Great quote from the webcast:

What we know about knowledge work, and software engineering, is that coordination cost grow non-linearly with batch size. We’ve known this since Greg Brooks published the Mythical Man Month, probably longer than that. So that is a key difference with manufacturing, coordination costs do not grow with batch size in manufacturing.

Related: Kanban In Software Engineering - Management Science for Software Engineering - Improving Communication - webcast of David Anderson talking about applying Agile and Deming’s ideas at Microsoft - What is Agile Software Development?

August 19, 2008

Lean IT Systems - Not ERP

I am not sure, IT needs to get lean on manufacturing, does the clearest job of explaining some things, but it does state some things well:

you can see how typical offshoring doesn’t work here, as it is counterproductive to true lean manufacturing. If your plant is 8,000 miles away, you need to plan even further out, building in as much as an extra month for transoceanic shipping. Manufacturers also need to carry a larger safety stock in case shipments do not arrive on time. Due to the high costs of shipping, especially with fuel costs rising, manufacturers typically order more than is needed in order to reduce per unit shipping costs, filling an entire container rather than ordering by the smaller palette size.

SAP or Oracle MRP are a problem because they cannot set up an “execution” system to perform based on lean principals.

It is this new concept that is the biggest stumbling block for IT in terms of adopting lean manufacturing. Most major companies have invested multiple millions in their ERP system, and it’s IT’s job to run the system. On top of that, these software-acquisition decisions for the major ERP systems are made by the CEO and CIO, who don’t understand the shop floor.

What the article is really talking about IT departments providing the proper tools for organizations to manage. IT should also adopt lean methods for their operation (many in IT that are practicing lean are doing so with agile software development methods). Toyota, not surprisingly does well at using IT to support lean manufacturing.

ERP stand for Enterprise Resource Planning and in IT circles referrers to amazingly complex IT systems to manage the organization. Some people think they are useful, I think they are overly complex, poor management implementations that end up having organizations conforming processes to the IT system instead of having an IT system that support the organization. And they are far too complex - web 2.0 type applications should be the focus not ERP. IT should liberate people to be more flexible with designing processes, PDSA… not act to enforce rigid rules.

Related: lean manufacturing articles - Information Technology and Management - Agile Management

August 18, 2008

Lean Management in Policing

photo of Jacksonville Sheriff Office Lean Team

Justice served up Jacksonville–style is all lean by Joe Jancsurak:

The Jacksonville Sheriff Office’s (JSO) Crime Reducing Initiatives Management and Enforcement Strategies (CRIMES) measures, tracks and analyzes crime-fighting statistics, such as the number of arrests and value of stolen and recovered property. Such findings are instrumental in determining the overall effectiveness of the JSO and where improvements need to be made.

Investigations stress uniformity. Lean “changed how we approach investigations,” says Sheriff Rutherford. “We found that three officers investigating three different burglaries might ask three different sets of questions. So we developed a standard form showing the questions that should be asked to ensure consistency.”

Hiring of school crossing guards made more expedient. “This one’s amazing,” Sheriff Rutherford chuckles. “It was taking us 68 days to hire someone from our eligibility list because we were sending candidates all over for different parts of the interview process. Now it takes us just three days to make a decision because we’re practicing ‘one-stop hiring.’”

This reminds me of the first efforts I know of for such efforts in policing (from the 1980s): Quality Improvement and Government: Ten Hard Lessons From the Madison Experience by David C. Couper, Chief of Police, City of Madison, Wisconsin.

Via: Upcoming Podcast: Lean Law Enforcement

Related: Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures - LA Jail Saves Time Processing Crime - The Public Sector and Deming - Curious Cat Management Improvement Search Engine

August 6, 2008

How to Develop Thinking People

Toyota’s Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People

Hayashi says, “Developing people requires physical endurance.” Frequent follow up is necessary, in person. It is not acceptable to give an assignment and follow up or scold only after three months, during a progress report meeting. Specific actions and detailed follow up are necessary.

Excellent advice.

Also, when we are required to deliver results with speed, we only give our subordinates small projects so that even if they fail they have time to recover. In the end, we give them the solution. We must firmly carry on the practice of developing thinking people. Mr. Ohno often said to us, “Don’t look with your, look with your feet. Don’t think with you head, think with your hands.” He also taught us, “People who can’t understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.”

And more wisdom. Great stuff from Taiichi Ohno, Nanpachi Hayashi and Jon Miller’s translation and great blog.

Related: Respect for People and Taiichi Ohno - Toyota IT for Kaizen - Management Improvement - Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno - Posts on Respect for People

August 4, 2008

India Lean Management

India’s Economic Times has an interview with James Womack, Now is the time for lean management, with an interesting quote:

When I last visited India in 2002, I looked carefully at several operations of the TVS group in the Chennai area. I found that they were the best examples of lean manufacturing I had ever seen outside of Toyota City. In my mind these facilities completely eliminated any questions as to whether “lean” would work in India. However, I have not visited India in six years and I have no data on the performance of Indian firms on average, so I can’t say what the trend is or how many success stories I might find if I had the time to visit at length. How-ever, I have high expectations for the potential of Indian firms to embrace the full range of lean principles and methods.

I have discussed TVS several times in the past; TVS has won several Deming Prizes.

Related: TVS Group Director on India - Manufacturing, Economy… - Deming Prize 2007 - Indian Deming Prize Winner Expanding - Toyota Chairman Comments on India and Thailand - Curious Cat Lean Manufacturing

July 23, 2008

Not Exactly Lean Packaging

HP shatters excessive packaging world record

Stephen said: “Imagine our excitement as we opened it, hoping against hope that it might contain a copy of some c-class virtual connect firmware that actually works.”

Sadly not. What the überbox did contain was 16 smaller boxes “which in turn [each] contained (wrapped in foam so they wouldn’t get broken) exactly two sheets of A4 paper”

It is hard to imagine what management system creates such solutions. But it is not hard to image Dilbert’s pointy haired boss fitting right in there.

Related: Is Poor Service the Industry Standard (HP)? - Muda/waste - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Companies in Need of Customer Focus

July 19, 2008

Rhode Island Manufacturing

Manufacturing has new look in R.I.

She used the auto industry as an example, pointing out that in the early years of the last century Henry Ford manufactured Model-T’s that were all the same. The consumer today demands a choice in models, colors and a host of other features when buying a car. “Manufacturers must be able to change processes very easily and very quickly,” she said, to meet constantly changing consumer demands.

The closing of an old-fashioned assembly-line, low-wage factory always makes headlines, contributing to the image of the industry as one with a bleak future, Taito noted, while advanced manufacturers who steadily grow and add three or four jobs a year win no notice. “But that’s real growth, sustained growth,” she said of the latter.

Grove said RIMES has promoted the advantages of the lean initiative to Rhode Island manufacturers for about 10 years. “When you adopt lean manufacturing, it becomes the process of the whole shop and, by necessity, employees have to be more of a team than in the past,” he said. On-the-job training is routine at Pilgrim, according to Grove.

Still, the industry’s transition has not been painless. The number of manufacturing jobs in the state has declined steadily. In 2002, there were 64,796 people employed in manufacturing in Rhode Island and, 30 years ago in 1978, there were 134,654, according to figures from the R.I. Department of Labor and Training.

Yet another illustration of what I have been saying for years. USA manufacturing continues to grow and USA manufacturing jobs continue to shrink (as do worldwide manufacturing jobs). And as I have been saying for years, China manufacturing output continues to grow very quickly and China manufacturing jobs continue to shrink (China lost 7 times as many manufacturing jobs as the USA from 1995-2002).

Related: Manufacturing and the Economy (2005 post) - Creating Jobs - Top 10 Manufacturing Countries 2006 - America’s Manufacturing Future - Wisconsin Manufacturing - Manufacturing Employee Shortage in Utah

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