Monthly Archives: October 2007

Fooled by Randomness

Posted on October 30, 2007 by John Hunter

This is a nice article discussing how people are often fooled by thinking there must be special causes for patterns in random data. I still remember my father showing my classes these lessons when I was in grade school. Playing At Dice – What That “Weekend Exercise” Was All About: Yes, that’s more or less the point. If the system is behaving statistically, it will show apparent sequential trends that in reality are mirages. The dice experiment demonstrates that – … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Statistics, Systems thinking | 3 Comments

Traveling for Health Care

Posted on October 29, 2007 by John Hunter

From my post on the Curious Cat Investing and Economics blog: My guess is that traveling for health care is going to increase greatly in the future. Health costs in the USA are enormous. Costs in Europe are different – often in wait time (or costs to avoid waiting) but another option is available – travel. Countries would be very wise to focus on building up this industry in my opinion. The economic benefits could be huge. The market is … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Health care

Bringing Lean Principles to Service Industries

Posted on October 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries by Julia Hanna “One of the important lessons we’ve seen on the ground is how Wipro approached the launch of this lean initiative,” Staats says. “They didn’t come out with big banners and say, ‘OK, today your work is lean work, and yesterday it wasn’t.’ They started with a small group and recruited other people from there. It was a very controlled experimentation.” In their research, Staats and Upton document how the use of … Continue reading →

Posted in India, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Software Development

IT Operations as a Competitive Advantage

Posted on October 26, 2007 by John Hunter

Operations is a competitive advantage… (Secret Sauce for Startups!) The example above is the tale of two Web 2.0 startups scaling to 20 systems during their first three months. The first team starts writing software and installing systems as they go, waiting to deal with the “ops stuff” until they have an “ops person”. The second team dedicates someone to infrastructure for the first few weeks and ramps up from there. They won’t need to hire an “ops person” for … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Strategic Deployment: How To Think Like Toyota

Posted on October 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Strategic Deployment: How To Think Like Toyota: Hoshin kanri is fundamental to Toyota’s success today, says Dennis, currently an instructor at the Lean Enterprise Institute. He says Toyota’s ability to grasp the situation, identify two or three obstacles, develop meaningful plans to address those obstacles, and deploy them “is outstanding.” Another company using strategy deployment, HNI Corp., has used a policy deployment mechanism for more than a decade. The office furniture manufacturer, an IndustryWeek Best Manufacturing Company for five consecutive … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS)

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

Posted on October 23, 2007 by John Hunter

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to run with it. … These grouplets have practically no budget, and they have no decision-making authority. What they have is a bunch of people who are committed to an idea and willing to work to convince the rest of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, IT, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

Manufacturing Takes off in India

Posted on October 22, 2007 by John Hunter

Manufacturing takes off in India by John Elliott: The sleek, clean factory in the Delhi suburb of Noida seems more Taiwan than India. Engineers in white overalls and goggles watch over an automated production line that spits out four billion state-of-the-art DVDs and CDs a year. To get to the factory floor, you have to pass through three air-cleaning passages – a process that makes it clear you’re no longer in crowded, dirty Delhi. This is not some futuristic vision … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, India, Manufacturing | 3 Comments

How Curiosity Empowers Toyota

Posted on October 20, 2007 by John Hunter

How Curiosity Empowers Toyota [the broken link was removed] by Keith McFarland: As I read Magee’s book one idea kept surfacing in my mind. Throughout its history, Toyota appears to have put an emphasis on an important but oft-overlooked characteristic: Curiosity. You can trace Toyota’s institutionalized curiosity back to its founder, Sakichi Toyoda (1867-1930), who became interested in improving the effectiveness of weaving looms, and who went on to revolutionize weaving technology in Japan and secure more than 100 patents … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Management Articles, Toyota Production System (TPS)

2007 William G. Hunter Award

Posted on October 19, 2007 by John Hunter

T.N. Goh received ASQ Statistics Division’s 2007 William G. Hunter Award. He sent me this email: You may not realize that I first met Bill 38 year ago, when he was in Singapore helping us set up the first school of engineering in the country. He persuaded me to go to the graduate school at UW-Madison and I daresay that’s the best advice I ever got in my whole career. Now when I come to think of it, what Bill … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Statistics | 1 Comment

Deming Prize 2007

Posted on October 17, 2007 by John Hunter

India continues to shine with Deming Prizes (and of course there economy and stock market have been doing pretty well too). Companies based in India took home both Deming Prizes this year and the Japan Quality Medal. Countries of organizations receiving the Deming Prize since 2000 (prior to that almost all winners were from Japan): Country Prizes India 14 Thailand 8 Japan 4 USA 1 Singapore 1 The 2007 Deming Prizes went to Asahi India Glass Limited, Auto Glass Division … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, India, Management | 4 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #21

Posted on October 16, 2007 by John Hunter

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals. Leadership by Ron Pereira – “5. Learn. I recently discussed the importance of having mentors in your life. I also believe it is important for a leader to continue learning him/herself.” Prioritizing the Elimination of the 7 Types of Waste by Jon Miller – “Priority #1. Overproduction is the worst of the wastes because a) it multiplies the other 6 wastes, and b) it hides your … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management

Enhancing Passion of Employees

Posted on October 13, 2007 by John Hunter

What can we do to enhance passion amongst employees? Some think you need to pay people more. If tomorrow you doubled everyone’s pay they are excited for a short time a few months later everything is the same on the passion front (it would lesson turnover as people stay for the extra money compared to what they would get elsewhere). Douglas McGregor explained, in the Human Side of Enterprise, nearly 50 years ago, the theory x and theory y styles … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | 4 Comments

Using Capitalism to Make the World Better

Posted on October 11, 2007 by John Hunter

I have mentioned Kiva before: Microfinancing Entrepreneurs (on our Curious Cat Economics and Investing blog). In addition to being a good cause Kiva really shows some great management strategies. The use of Information Technology to connect people directly is a wonderful example of using IT effectively (understanding psychology). Kiva lets you loan money directly to an entrepreneur of your choice. Kiva provides loans through partners (operating in the countries) to the entrepreneurs. Those partners do charge the entrepreneurs interest (to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, curiouscat.com, Economics, Fun, IT, Management, Psychology | 7 Comments

Where to Start Improvement

Posted on October 10, 2007 by davenave

Guest post by Dave Nave The question of where to start improvement is not an ‘either/or’ choice of top-down or bottom-up approach. The place to start is both. Leading an organization requires both a long-term and a short-term focus. With changing management practices being long-term and improving operational efficiency being short-term. The organization is a system. Optimization of any single component (management practices or production operations) frequently detracts from the whole. For many years I firmly believed (actually hoped) the … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Early History Of Quality Management Online

Posted on October 5, 2007 by John Hunter

I started looking at quality management resources online in 1995 (maybe 1994). At the time I was on the board of the Public Sector Network – what would become the American Society of Quality (ASQ) government division. When we started working with ASQ it took something like 2 months from the time I wrote an article until people received it. Now in 1995, the internet (outside of universities) was in its infancy. I was writing a column on the resources … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com, IT, Management, Public Sector | 4 Comments

Change for Your Customer

Posted on October 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Lets say you buy a some ice cream. You get your wonderful ice cream cone from the employee and they point you to a small metal dish to pick up the coins you should recieve as change (the currency is handed to the customer by the employee). A fair number of stores in the USA do this (the change is automatically put in the dish – essentially by the cash register). It is a small thing but it seems to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Psychology