Author Archives: John Hunter

Quality Conversation with Gary Convis

Posted on April 29, 2006 by John Hunter

Quality Conversation with Gary Convis by Norman Bodek: There are two pillars; one is continuous improvement. You might not call this a human issue exactly, but Toyota’s success rests on the need for all employees, all management, to be looking for and striving for continuous improvement and never being satisfied. … We believe very strongly in what the Japanese call “genchi genbutsu,” the foundation of Toyota’s engineering strategy, which means “Go, see, confirm and be aware with your own eyes.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 1 Comment

Why are you afraid of process?

Posted on April 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Why are you afraid of process? by Seth Godin I spend a lot of time railing against organizations and teams that fall in love with process at the expense of innovation. This is not a post about that. It’s about the opposite. Seth Godin does a great job helping people think creatively. I am glad he sees that process management is not in conflict with that. Many others fall into the trap of thinking it is, see our previous post: … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Creativity Overflowing

Posted on April 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Creativity Overflowing [the broken link was removed] : It was clear that Whirlpool needed to reinvent its corporate culture. To do so, it had to figure out the answers to basic questions that managers everywhere struggle with: How do you define innovation? How do you measure success? How do you teach people to be creative? Related: Managing Innovation Deming on Innovation How Whirlpool Defines Innovation

Posted in Creativity, Management Articles

Using Design of Experiments as a Process Road Map

Posted on April 23, 2006 by John Hunter

Using Design of Experiments as a Process Road Map by Davis Balestracci: The current design of experiments (DOE) renaissance seems to favor factorial designs and/or orthogonal arrays as a panacea. In my 25 years as a statistician, my clients have always found much more value in obtaining a process “road map” by generating the inherent response surface in a situation. It’s hardly an advanced technique, but it leads to much more effective optimization and process control. DoE is a tool … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Process improvement, Statistics | Tagged

Stop Demotivating Employees

Posted on April 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation [broken link removed – Harvard is extremely bad about breaking links, which is an indication of how little they think about anything but the short term] by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer from the Harvard Management Update: Most companies have it all wrong. They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them. Clear, simple and right. Douglas McGregor explored this topic well in 1960. He explained … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Popular, Psychology | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

Blogging is Good for You

Posted on April 18, 2006 by John Hunter

Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career [the article has been moved behind an expensive paywall and is not even close to worth 1/100th of the cost so I removed the link. I added some links to related content at the end of the post.] For those with blogs this is a nice article to read – good positive reinforcement. It is probably a good marketing move to write an article that bloggers will like. Many will then post their thoughts … Continue reading →

Posted in Career | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Lean Accounting: What’s It All About?

Posted on April 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Accounting: What’s It All About? [the broken link was removed] by Brian H. Maskell and Bruce L. Baggaley: Companies using Lean Accounting have better information for decision-making, have simple and timely reports that are clearly understood by everyone in the company, they understand the true financial impact of lean changes, they focus the business around the value created for the customers, and Lean Accounting actively drives the lean transformation. This helps the company to grow, to add more value … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles | Tagged | 1 Comment

Toyota in the US Economy

Posted on April 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Some figures on Toyota’s economic impact in the USA. Toyota North American vehicle manufacturing totals: From Toyota’s web site: Toyota Manufacturing in the USA [the broken link was removed]: by 2008, Toyota will have the annual capacity to build 1.81 million cars and trucks, 1.44 million engines, and 600,000 automatic transmissions in North America. The company’s direct employment in North America is more than 38,000 and direct investment is nearly $16.8 billion with annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Quality and Costs

Posted on April 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Finding the balance between quality and cost [the broken link was removed] by Thomas Nolan Maureen Bisognano One of the steps toward a system for improving value is recognizing that waste removal is an essential component of that system, not just a by-product of defect reduction. To alleviate discomfort with setting aims for cost reduction, senior leaders should: Set aims for cost reduction while also mandating that quality must be maintained or improved by the effort. In the article they … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Quality tools | Tagged ,

China’s Manufacturing Economy

Posted on April 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Brad Setser posts on manufacturing comparisons: Have China’s manufacturing powers been exaggerated? [the broken link was removed] I am all for pushing against over-generalizations that get repeated so often that they become conventional wisdom. The oft-stated argument that France isn’t growing is one example. In fact, France has grown faster than either Germany or Italy over the past few years, and France grew for the same reason the US grew: soaring real estate prices have pumped up domestic demand. But … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Economics, Manufacturing, Popular | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The World’s Most Innovative Companies

Posted on April 14, 2006 by John Hunter

The World’s Most Innovative Companies [the broken link was removed] : Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool of new ideas, it’s about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time. … Consumers increasingly are doing the innovation themselves. Consider Google Inc. (GOOG), our No. 2 … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Management Articles | Tagged

Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus

Posted on April 13, 2006 by John Hunter

Reddit is a site for what’s new and popular on the web (votes by the user community rate web links). That user community is highly skewed toward software engineers who are a bit irreverent (as some of the language in this post shows). Today Reddit linked to: Introducing the Dell De-Crapifier… [the broken link was removed] which is essentially a tool to help you get rid of all the extra software you get with the Dell computer. Dell gets paid … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Lean Education Academic Network Spring Meeting

Posted on April 12, 2006 by John Hunter

The Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN) is having their Spring meeting [the broken link was removed] at the University of Kentucky in Lexington May 10th – May 12th. This is targeted at educators and students (a fairly small slice of our audience): still it looks interesting so here are some details. The agenda [the broken link was removed] includes: Tour Summit Polymer, considered by the Toyota Supplier Support Center to be the leanest manufacturing facility in the US. And a … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Lean thinking, Management | 1 Comment

Why You Need a Roth IRA

Posted on April 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Why You Need a Roth IRA [the broken link was removed] by Erin Burt: If a 25-year-old contributes $4,000 each year until she retires and makes an average annual return of 8% on her investment, she’ll have more than $1.1 million saved by the time she retires at age 65. And the money is all hers — she won’t have to give the IRS a cent of it if she waits until retirement to cash out. … If that same … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing

Lean Material Handling

Posted on April 11, 2006 by John Hunter

Don’t Ignore your Water Spider a great post by Mike Wroblewski: The second night was little better and I quickly evaluated the improvements from the night before. Later that second night, I made more improvements. Each day, I continued the cycle of experimenting with the improvements and making adjustments to see what worked best. By the end of the week, my pedometer reading hit only 10,000 steps or five miles and not one line operator had to get their own … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing

Leading Lean: Missed Opportunity

Posted on April 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Leading Lean: Missed Opportunity [the broken link was removed] by Jamie Flinchbaugh: Three elements are needed to gain the benefits from using pull production to drive problems out into the open. First, you need strong problem-solving skills. Bringing a problem to the surface is only half of the battle-you still have to correct the problem. Second, you need an infrastructure capable of solving problems. This means persuading employees at all levels to respond to problems in real time. This does … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , ,