Monthly Archives: November 2006

Common Cause Variation

Posted on November 30, 2006 by John Hunter

Every system has variation. Common cause variation is the variation due to the current system. Dr. Deming increased his estimate of variation due to the system (common cause variation) to 97% (earlier in his life he cited figures around 80%). Special cause variation is that due to some special (not part of the system) cause. The control chart (in addition to other things) helps managers to avoid tampering (taking action on common cause variation as though it were a special … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Quality tools, Theory of Constraints | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

What Could we do Better?

Posted on November 29, 2006 by John Hunter

At the Hunter Conference, years ago, a speaker (I forget who) talked about how to get useful feedback. He discussed how asking “how is everything” normally will get the response: “fine” (which is often that is exactly what the staff wants so they can move on without wasting any time). However, if you really want to improve that doesn’t help. He explained how he worked with Disney to improve their restaurants. Using the “how is everything” question had not alerted … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Popular, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Why Use Designed Factorial Experiments?

Posted on November 28, 2006 by John Hunter

One-Factor-at-a-Time Versus Designed Experiments (site broke link so I removed it -when will people learn how to manage web content?) by Veronica Czitrom: The advantages of designed experiments over [One Factor at a Time] OFAT experiments are illustrated using three real engineering OFAT experiments, and showing how in each case a designed experiment would have been better. This topic is important because many scientists and engineers continue to perform OFAT experiments. I still remember, as a child, asking what my … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Six sigma | 1 Comment

The Illusion of Understanding

Posted on November 25, 2006 by John Hunter

The “Illusion of Explanatory Depth”: How Much Do We Know About What We Know? (broken link 🙁 was removed) is an interesting post that touches on psychology and theory of knowledge. Often (more often than I’d like to admit), my son… will ask me a question about how something works, or why something happens the way it does, and I’ll begin to answer, initially confident in my knowledge, only to discover that I’m entirely clueless. I’m then embarrassed by my … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Applying Lean Tools to University Courses

Posted on November 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Take a look at an interesting series of posts on Applying Lean Tools to University Courses by Luke Van Dongen: We have discovered that creating a common experience in the classroom is absolutely essential. To accomplish this we implemented a modified production simulation exercise and in doing so, bring the opportunity to Go & See to the students. These types of simulations are quite common and are usually done with building blocks or paper airplanes. We chose paper airplanes and … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged | 3 Comments

From Lean Tools to Lean Management

Posted on November 22, 2006 by John Hunter

From lean tools to lean management (link broken by site so I removed it) by Jim Womack: Only management by science through constant experimentation to answer questions can produce sustainable improvements in value streams. (Toyota’s A3 is a wonderful management tool for putting science to work and I’ll have more to say about it in the next few months.) Please understand: Lean tools are great. We all need to master and deploy them, and our efforts of the last 15 … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Quality tools, Systems thinking

More Lean Podcasts

Posted on November 22, 2006 by John Hunter

New from the Lean Blog: Jamie Flinchbaugh on Educating Leadership Previously: Jim Huntzinger on Lean Accounting, Norman Bodek on Toyota’s recent quality issues and lean leadership and Jamie Flinchbaugh on Lean Leadership. As expected these are well worth listening to. Related: management webcast posts – lean thinking articles and online resources – Toyota production system posts – articles by Jamie Flinchbaugh

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, webcast

The Lean MBA

Posted on November 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Kevin Meyer recaps the ideas of Improving Management Education [the broken link was removed] by M.L. Emiliani in his post – The Lean MBA. I suggest reading his post and the original article. In the Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog, The Future is Engineering points to 2 great essays on the secret of Silicon Valley. Guy Kawasaki puts it well, though in my opinion far to kind to our current MBA system (the inordinate focus on accounting does actual … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Lean thinking, Systems thinking | Tagged , | 1 Comment

European Blackout: Human Error-Not

Posted on November 18, 2006 by John Hunter

German utility E.On says major European blackout was caused by human error [the broken link was removed] Germany utility E.On AG said Wednesday that a European-wide blackout earlier this month that left millions without power was the result of human error and not any technical glitches. The Duesseldorf-based company said the power outage, which led to blackouts in parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain on Nov. 4, was not caused by a lack of proper maintenance or … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Fast Company: What drives Toyota?

Posted on November 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Very good article – What drives Toyota? [the broken link was removed] by Charles Fishman: So a team of assembly employees made a real decision. Don’t make the worker pick the parts; let him focus on installing them. The idea seems obvious in retrospect: Deliver a kit of presorted visors and seat belts–one kit per car, each containing exactly the right parts. The team applied the simplest technology available, the blue Rubbermaid caddy. “We went just down the road to … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 1 Comment

Sub-Optimize

Posted on November 15, 2006 by John Hunter

From the “you call this agile?” department by Joel Spolsky: Yes, context switching is painful. Yes, you need to take into account the costs of context switching when you interrupt someone’s work. But every decision has pros and cons and when I hear a manager who is just talking about the cons without considering the pros, that manager is not doing their job. This is a simple article about basically choosing to sub optimize a part to optimize the whole. … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking | 2 Comments

TPS and Jidoka

Posted on November 15, 2006 by John Hunter

TPS & Jidoka, interview of Tomo “Tom” Harada by Art Smalley: There are two different parts to Jidoka. The first meaning is to separate man from machine. It was normal in the original parent company for a single young woman to operate many machines since they were automated. So when Mr. Ohno came to the automotive company after WWII and saw one man operating one machine tool he thought that it was strange and inefficient. He embarked upon a path … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Quality tools, Toyota Production System (TPS)

Ackoff’s F-laws: Common Sins of Management

Posted on November 11, 2006 by John Hunter

Russ Ackoff once again does a great job of providing insight into management. I highly recommend A Little Book of f-Laws [the broken link was removed] where Ackoff, with Herbert Addison and Sally Bibb, present 13 common sins of management, such as: Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure See: Deming’s thoughts on unknown and unknowable figures. A book with over 80 management flaws (er I mean f-Laws) will be … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Management Articles, quote | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Information Quality In Health Care

Posted on November 11, 2006 by John Hunter

The Life and Death Results of Information Quality by Doug Johnson: I believe poor information and the inability to make medical decisions with correct, complete and timely information kills more people than any single disease in the United States. In the same way we have tagged diabetes with the term “the silent killer,” poor information quality creeps into our decision-making capabilities like a thief in the night. When patients die because their blood glucose levels get too high after surgery, … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Health care, Management

Lean Education Meeting Slides

Posted on November 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Presentation slides from the joint The Lean Aerospace Initiative [the broken link was removed] and LEAN joint meeting (October 16-18, 2006) are available [the broken link was removed – the links that relied on MIT to retain historical information using technology over the long term failed. It is sad MIT doesn’t understand how to manage information using technology more effectively. They really should learn how to do the extremely basic tasks of combining technology and management if they expect to … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Management

Amazon Innovation

Posted on November 9, 2006 by John Hunter

I believe Amazon uses technology very well. They have done many innovative things. They have been less successful at turning their technology into big profits. But I continue to believe they have a good shot at doing so going forward Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Management, Popular | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments