Monthly Archives: August 2006

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 called the Overjustification Effect. “I must be writing bug-free code because I like the money I get for it,” they think, and the extrinsic motivation displaces the intrinsic motivation. Since extrinsic motivation is a much weaker effect, the net result … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

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 system works is how they deal with suppliers. Toyota takes the stance that it competes supply chain against supply chain, so it works hand-in-hand with vendors. It’s not just what happens in its body and assembly plants. Taiichi Ohno, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , ,

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 new company. Interviews include: David Heinemeier Hansson [the broken link was removed] (who many of our readers may not have heard of but who has recently done a great web development framework [Ruby on Rails] and development philosophy very compatible … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Innovation, IT, Management, Management Articles, Software Development | Tagged , , , ,

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 12 Deming students to learn from Dr. Gipsie Ranney, Dr. Michael Tveite, and Dr. Joyce Orsini over 6 days. Lean Accounting Summit W. Edwards Deming Institute Annual Conference [the broken link was removed] – I will be at this conference, … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Education | Tagged

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 making salaries public. And here’s the problem: If Johnson’s salary is (unfairly) higher than mine, and secret, I can’t complain to my manager about it because I can’t admit that I know about it. When a company sets up a … Continue reading →

Posted in Management

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 stakes, operational centers separated by machine types: the stamping machines, lathes, drilling, milling etc. each producing mountains of inventory taking weeks even months to produce an automobile. TPS focused on eliminating the wastes created by these separate machine centers. TPS … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged ,

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 still earn profits. … I wish every business course taught that profit and good citizenship are not mutually exclusive, but rather highly complimentary.

Posted in Deming | Tagged

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 – less than that of the average medieval peasant – but more than a third of us don’t even use all of our allotted time off. While a dramatic contrast, I don’t really believe it is accurate. I believe workers in … 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 — that include value stream mapping, 5S, total productive maintenance, and Kanban techniques, among others — to free up 32,000 square feet of floor space, reduce panelboard cycle time to six minutes, boost on-time delivery from 72 per cent to 92 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged

Health Care Pictographs

Posted on August 2, 2006 by John Hunter

New pharmaceutical pictograms The Risk/Benefit Assessment of Drugs-Analysis and Response (RAD-AR [the broken link was removed]) Council of Japan has released a new batch of pictograms for use on pharmaceutical packaging. No more deciphering complicated dosage directions and warnings — a glance is all it takes now. See all the pictographs [the broken link was removed] I don’t understand all the pictographs. If these are helpful in Japan, (assuming others in the USA see it the way I do) it … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Countries Which are Easiest for Doing Business

Posted on August 2, 2006 by John Hunter

World Bank report on doing business in countries worldwide [the broken link was removed]. Top 10 countries, based on the ease of doing business: 1 New Zealand 2 Singapore 3 United States 4 Canada 5 Norway 6 Australia 7 Hong Kong, China 8 Denmark 9 United Kingdom 10 Japan

Posted in Economics | 2 Comments

Lean Healthcare – Year One

Posted on August 1, 2006 by John Hunter

A Year in Healthcare by Mark Graban – interesting thoughts on his first year in lean healthcare, after working in lean manufacturing previously. Not that I used to operate as a “know it all” in manufacturing settings, but being in a totally unfamiliar environment really stretches you to 1) ask questions and 2) teach concepts to those who really do understand the environment, so they can “figure it out” themselves. I think that leads to better results than if I … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management