This lean thinking webcast from India actually does a pretty decent job of providing an overview (for a business TV channel) even if they get some things a bit confused. The discuss TQM in India preceding lean which is an accurate view in my opinion – quality management shared many lean principles. They even talk of lean at Ford doing lean first. But they get the decades for that a bit off. They seem to mash together the “quality is job one” refocus on quality lead by Dr. Deming in the 1980’s with Henry Ford in the early 1900’s.

The webcast includes Jim Womack discussing lean thinking. He mentions the misunderstanding of lean as primarily cost cutting.

Related: Curious Cat Lean Management Resources – 2008 Deming Prize: Tata Steel – Lean management in India – TVS Group Director on India, Manufacturing and the Economy

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

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

Comments on Who Influences Your Thinking? – Survey results -

> 1. Are people getting most of their information
> from other sources?
That would be my guess.

Similar to the phenomenon of “the long tail” which is an interesting topic in its own right. We tend to focus on the popular few (books, musicians, movies, authors, computer programs…) but often the sum of the less popular many is more significant. See:

• The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, Wired, Oct 2004 “The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are”
• Continued discussion of the Amazon figures in a Chiris Anderson’s blog. “I’ve now spoken to Jeff Bezos (and others) about this. He doesn’t have a hard figure for the percentage of sales of products not available offline, but reckons that it’s closer to 25-30%.”
• The long tail – a secret sauce for companies like Amazon.com, Netflix and Apple Computer, Motley Fool, NPR Audio Recording

Getting back to the question raised by the “Who Influences Your Thinking” post; More importantly I believe they (we) are just failing to get all we should.
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