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Author Archives: John Hunter
Supplier Partnering
Supplier Partnering: It’s better, it’s longer and it’s not what you think [the broken link was removed], Rey Elbo (Philippines): This is to teach suppliers who could only continue supplying based on their long-term commitment and involvement to the implementation of basic 5S good housekeeping and process flow or layout. Under this type of partnering, the suppliers are constantly educated, monitored and measured by their clients a.k.a. big companies. If there is ever any confrontation between client and supplier in … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles
Tagged suppliers
Innovation and Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a license that lets the creators of intellectual property clearly define how that property may be used by others. Partially this license is a reaction to the poor way copyright law is being viewed today (see links below). Partially it is tool that gives creators a way to provide for more interaction with their ideas. And this interaction is a great way to market, in the right circumstances. More managers should be thinking about how their organizations … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Economics, Innovation
Tagged copyright, deadly diseases, Economics, Innovation
4 Comments
Ford and Managing the Supplier Relationship
There have a been a number of articles (Ford to slash vendors of key parts [the broken link was removed] – Ford Rethinks Supply Strategy and posts (A “Kinder and Gentler” Lean Supply Base? – Ford Adopts Toyota-style Supplier Strategy [the broken link was removed]) about supplier management, many springing from Ford’s announcement [the broken link was removed]. My first thought on reading the stories about the press release was, didn’t Ford already say they were going to do this … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Manufacturing, Systems thinking
Tagged critical thinking, culture, Deming, management, organization as a system, problem solving, suppliers
9 Comments
Performance Without Appraisal
In response to the Alternatives to Stack Ranking? post on the popular Mini-Microsoft blog. I’m also taking some time to contemplate on Deming’s points and assess how Microsoft is doing against them. … What I would deeply appreciate is real-world experience from people living with stack ranking alternatives. I strongly suggest chapter 9 (Performance Without Appraisal) of The Leader’s Handbooks, by Peter Scholtes. You mentioned Deming. When asked “If we eliminate performance appraisals, as you suggest, what do we do … Continue reading
Business Improvement with Six Sigma
Business Improvement with Six Sigma [the broken link was removed] by Dr Anirban Basu (Express Computer, India IT weekly): The organisation, a CMMI-level 5 company found that although the SLA (Service Level Agreement) with its US client specified that the support time for most critical (level one) complaints should not exceed 6 hours, on the average, it was taking 8 hours with variation from 2 to 14 hours. Further, its US client told them that the support time needed to … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles
Spreading the Lean Gospel
Spreading the Lean Gospel [the broken link was removed] by Rebecca Reid: Bested said lean manufacturing at the Air Fuel Modules Division was a two-fold philosophy. The first aspect was to resolve current manufacturing inefficiencies and to implement lean principles for all new programs coming in, and the second was changing the business processes involved.
Posted in Management Articles
The Lion of Lean
Great article – The Lion of Lean: An Interview with James Womack [broken link was removed] by Francis J. Quinn, Supply Chain Management Review: Let’s just take one example in the purchasing area. People say, “Yes, we’re going to have a lean purchasing organization. And we’ll start by having target pricing.” You say, “Great, but how are you going to do target pricing?” “Well, we’ll set the prices 5 percent below what they are now and that will be our … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Deming, Lean thinking, Management
Tagged lean manufacturing
How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers [the broken link was removed], Sarah Jane Johnston interview of Steven Spear. It is our conclusion that Toyota has developed a set of principles, Rules-in-Use we’ve called them, that allow organizations to engage in this (self-reflective) design, testing, and improvement so that (nearly) everyone can contribute at or near his or her potential, and when the parts come together the whole is much, much greater than the sum of the parts. The main … Continue reading
SPC: History and Understanding
SPC: From Chaos To Wiping the Floor [broken link removed 🙁 it will be nice when sites start to realize breaking links is not acceptable] by Lynne Hare (who also was the 1997 Hunter Award winner) Shewhart based control chart limits more on the economics of change than on underlying probabilities. Ever the empiricist, Shewhart seems not to have trusted probability limits alone. Setting control limits at 3 standard deviations is a decision based on experience. Shewhart, Deming and others … Continue reading
Operational Definitions and Data Collection
Americans’ Dirty Secret Revealed [the broken link was removed] by Bjorn Carey See also: Google News on washing hands [broken link was removed] – Soap and Detergent Association press release [another broken link was remove] A study released recently spawned a flurry of articles on washing hands. I have seen such reporting before and again I find it interesting (as sad as that might be). The stories repeatedly say things like: “Men’s hands dirtier than women’s.” The study actual was … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Deming, Management
Tagged critical thinking, Data, evidence based management, operational definition, Statistics
1 Comment
Googlebombing
The Google blog has a new post on: Googlebombing ‘failure’ Basically they explain that Google is not making a judgment that the result top results for “failure” represent Google’s opinion of who is a failure. The top result is the Biography of President George W. Bush [the broken link was removed] on the whitehouse.gov web site, and the second result is Michael Moore’s home page. As Google explains: By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce … Continue reading
Everybody Wants It, Toyota’s Got It
Everybody Wants It, Toyota’s Got It [oops, pointy haired boss broke link, so I removed it] by Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail (Canada): Despite riding atop the North American auto sector for the past decade, the company’s manufacturing methods are an open book. People often look for the secret new idea instead of just executing well. So much improvement is available just using ideas that have been known for decades. But instead of doing that people keep searching for new … Continue reading
25 New MacArthur Fellows
25 New MacArthur Fellows Announced press release [the broken link was removed] overview of fellows [the broken link was removed] The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2005. Each received a phone call from the Foundation this week informing them that they will be given $500,000 in ‘“no strings attached’ support over the next five years. I think the fellowships are a great idea: give money to people who have done excellent … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity
Solectron IndustryWeek Best Plant
Solectron Corp: IW Best Plants [the broken link was removed] by John Teresko To empower its employee strategy, Columbia (and the rest of Solectron) is dedicated to an ongoing journey of Six Sigma and lean manufacturing, says Petta. For example, several times a year it is not unusual to encounter kaizen events on the plant floor … before lean arrived at Columbia, WIP typically was five days. After implementation of lean, WIP has been reduced to a half-day to one … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles, Manufacturing
Healthcare Costs Spike Again
Healthcare Costs Spike Again [the broken link was removed] by Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money: The premium growth rate this year – 9.2 percent – outpaced by miles both the growth in wages (2.7 percent) and inflation (3.5 percent) … since 2000 premiums for family coverage have gone up 73 percent. During the same period, wages rose just 15 percent. This is not sustainable. I feel like Brad Setser talking about the USA trade deficiets (by the way if you have any … Continue reading
Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste
Edson Puts The Squeeze On Waste [the broken link was removed] by Ron Richardson “One of our wrong, old core beliefs was that inventory is good,” says Hattin. “We thought it provided rapid availability to parts and allowed us to get to work quicker. That was the first sacred cow sacrificed on the altar of Lean management.” He says there were some veteran employees who felt “a good deal of pain” when the old way of operating was tossed out. … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles