Author Archives: John Hunter

Patent Review Innovation

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved. A recent article from Money offers an interesting idea (to try anyway) for one part of the problem. Patent review goes Wiki That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Economics, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | 2 Comments

Manufacturing Value Added Economic Data

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

In our post on Manufacturing and the Economy we examined global manufacturing value added economic data. The World Bank has provided updated data, for 2002, which we provide below. In, Global Manufacturing Data by Country, we explored data from the United Nations through 2004 (on a related, but different, measure of manufacturing). Country 1990 2001 2002 1990-2002% increase* United States 1,040,600 1,422,999 1,463,300 41 Japan 810,231 865,809 811,829 0 China 116,572 407,513 No Data 250 Germany 456,405 385,923 410,644 -10 … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Economics, Manufacturing, quote | 3 Comments

Google Management

Posted on August 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Management a la Google [the broken link, wsj.com, was removed] by Gary Hamel This short article makes some interesting points, definitely worth a read. Google has invested heavily in building a highly transparent organization that makes it easy to share ideas, poll peers, recruit volunteers, and build natural constituencies for change. Every project team, and there are hundreds, maintains a Web site that is continuously monitored for peer feedback. In this way, unorthodox ideas have the chance to accumulate peer … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | 1 Comment

Call for Papers on Deming Management

Posted on August 14, 2006 by John Hunter

The Deming Research Seminar [the broken link was removed] is accepting paper through October 2nd for presentation at the 13th annual seminar in New York City Feb 12th and 13th, 2007. To be considered, papers must be original work. Proposals of 200 words or less are due by 2 October 2006. For more information about submitting a paper see the Deming Institute website [the broken link was removed]. Papers that link Dr. Deming’s work to the academic literature or to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming

Eliminate Slogans

Posted on August 13, 2006 by John Hunter

This poster may do a better job, than my posts, of showing why posters and slogan are not an effective management strategy. Text from the poster: “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.” Despair (link to the motivation poster shown here), offers many such de-motivational posters and note cards – well done satire, in my opinion, but they … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Deming, Management, Popular, Psychology, quote, Respect | Tagged , | 3 Comments

10 Kaizen Tips

Posted on August 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Kaizen Hot-Wash Lesson 6. Pick the right lean tool for the job and use it well. There are plenty of lean tools to choose for kaizen activities so your MUST determine the right tool and use it well. In our case, the spaghetti diagram was the best tool. It was simple to use although extremely time consuming for the large amount of travel in our process. The spaghetti diagram quickly showed the team the best areas for opportunity and was … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools

Teach, Write and Live Quality

Posted on August 11, 2006 by John Hunter

Teach, Write and Live Quality by Michelle Bangert Quality Magazine’s inaugural Quality Professional of the Year, Roderick A. Munro, Ph.D.: He also had the privilege of joining the Deming Study Group of Greater Detroit. “It was such an honor for me,” Munro says. The Deming Study group of Greater Detroit met every other month for almost three years. Eight people approached Deming about starting the group, and they could invite up to two others. One of the members invited Munro, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management | 1 Comment

Competition

Posted on August 11, 2006 by John Hunter

Why I hate programming competitions [the broken link was removed] by Mike Vanier Most aspects of Deming’s thinking seemed natural to me from the start. Some ideas have taken longer (it took me awhile to be won over to the harm caused by performance appraisals, for example). Competition is another area that I still struggle with. I have been moved greatly by my experience and the thoughts of people like Alfie Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition). But I … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Psychology, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , ,

Lean Health Care Works

Posted on August 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Health Care? It Works! [the broken link was removed] by Patricia Panchak In 1971, the U.S. spent 7.5% of its gross national product on health care — about $75 billion. We now spend 14.5%, which is about $1.3 trillion. The article was written in 2003, by 2005 health care spending reached 15.3% of the USA economy. A group of Iowa manufacturing executives has already taken Jimmerson’s recommendation a few steps further: They’re teaming up with their health-care providers, showing … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged

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