Category Archives: Management

Dell Providing Computers Without Bloatware

Posted on July 11, 2007 by John Hunter

The Art Of Listening: Dell Converts Customer Requests Into Exclusive Vostro Brand For Small Business Dell today extended its commitment to customers with a new brand of notebook and desktop computers designed for small businesses. The Vostro branded products feature … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management | Comments Off

Good Customer Service Example

Posted on July 9, 2007 by John Hunter

IRA Toyota – Milford; Great Service [the broken link was removed] I was pleasantly surprised to find a “Service wizard” available. You create an account, specify the standard details about the car (make, model, year, mileage). If you add the … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, IT, Management, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged cars, customer service, lean manufacturing | 1 Comment

New Articles on Toyota Management

Posted on July 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Harvard Business Review has a new article on Toyota that both the Elegant Solutions blog (by Matthew E. May author of Elegant Solutions: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation – via: lean blog) and Got Boondoggle, have raved about. Amazing HBR … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 2 Comments

Health Care the Toyota Way

Posted on July 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Clare Crawford-Mason produced the 1980 NBC news white paper on W. Edwards Deming that sparked a movement to improve management. She produced the Deming library tapes to help reach those taking steps to improve management and looking for more help. … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Health care, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Comments Off

Focus on Customers and Employees

Posted on July 5, 2007 by John Hunter

As I have stated I believe it is the purpose of organization to serve many stakeholders (customer, employees, stockholders, community…). Thankfully some companies agree: Compensation at Whole Foods – Starbucks: Respect for Workers – Google: Ten Golden Rules – Amazon … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged Customer focus, leadership, management, managing people, organization as a system, respect for people | 4 Comments

Process Improvement and Innovation

Posted on July 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Every so often an article appears discussing the need to change focus from process improvement to innovation (and recently they are followed with quite a bit of blog talk). I disagree on several grounds. First you have needed to focus … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged change, continual improvement, Innovation, iteration, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools | 5 Comments

Visual Instructions Example

Posted on July 4, 2007 by John Hunter

How to get people to actually use instructions for using your product: make it easy to do so. This blog post illustrates a well designed instruction guide for the Seagate FreeAgent backup drive. Simple pictures make it very obvious what … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Quality tools | Tagged Quality tools, visual communication, visual instructions, visual management, visual work instructions | 4 Comments

Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures

Posted on July 3, 2007 by John Hunter

The systemic failure of police raids continues to cause deaths of innocent people. In congressional testimony last month Radley Balko presented more evidence in: Our Militarized Police Departments: Pay particular attention to the red markers on the map. Those are … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Public Sector, Respect | 3 Comments

Deming’s 14 Points

Posted on July 2, 2007 by John Hunter

The Project Management Student blog has posted point 14 of the series covering Deming’s 14 points for Project Management. I have mentioned it before, and the series is worth reading (in this Deming advocates opinion). A sample, from Enable Pride … Continue reading →

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Management Improvement Carnival #14

Posted on July 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Management Improvement Carnival #14 is hosted by Kevin Meyer at Evolving Excellence. Some highlights include: Reducing Waste for Shoppers at Lean Blog. “The traditional grocery store is to spread out common items to force you to walk the whole store … Continue reading →

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