Author Archives: John Hunter

Lean Retailing

Posted on December 28, 2005 by John Hunter

Lean Manufacturing Needs Lean Retailers [the broken link was removed] by Bill Waddell: Stuck in their outdated business model, with a simple minded economic model, they all scour the globe looking for a supplier they can wring a few cents out of on the purchase price, then send the product in staggering quantities through the most bloated and wasteful supply chains. … The hope for lean in retailing comes from the building products sector, where Home Depot and Lowes are … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, quote

America’s Manufacturing Future

Posted on December 27, 2005 by John Hunter

A Wake-up Call From Asia [the broken link was removed] by Patricia Panchak [the broken link was removed]: China and India very aggressively are pursuing advanced manufacturing. Increasingly, China’s exports to the U.S. are composed of advanced-technology products. … J.P. Morgan said it would add 4,500 employees in India by the year 2007, mainly by setting up operations in Bangalore to support its growing structured finance and derivatives businesses globally. Such jobs are not the simple, low-value call-center work that … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Economics, India, Manufacturing | Tagged , ,

Selecting Six Sigma Black Belts

Posted on December 27, 2005 by John Hunter

A Question of Balance by Jim Bossert and Larry Krynski, Quality Digest. The articles explores attributes needed by black belts: personal, technical ability, training, experience, aptitude and culture. “This article examines “each attribute to see how it contributes to selecting the right candidate. Organizations can use the information when interviewing candidates, knowing that whomever they select will contribute to the success of their Six Sigma projects.”

Posted in Management Articles, Six sigma | Tagged ,

Inside Google

Posted on December 26, 2005 by John Hunter

A View Into Google’s Inner Workings [the broken link was removed] by Dan Farber: Merrill listed the following attributes of Google’s development culture: Hire smart people who are nice to work with Flat management structure No silos, open communications Ideas mailing list 20 percent (time spent on personal projects) Small projects Iterative design, constant improvement Server-based deployment (AJAX) Test, don’t guess “Innovation doesn’t happen ‘on the way by,’ it must be design into everything we do,”

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management | Tagged ,

Quality, SPC and Your Career

Posted on December 24, 2005 by John Hunter

Lead To Succeed [sigh, ASQ broke the link so I removed it, it sure gets tiring how backwards some organizations still are about using the internet, June 2010] by Stephen S. Prevette: * Succeed as a quality professional by branding yourself and providing a service or product your manager and organization deem worth paying for. * Lead your manager “your customers” by providing the data they need in a form they can understand. This is a great article on how … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Deming, Management, quote, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Six Sigma Government for Liberia?

Posted on December 22, 2005 by John Hunter

Using Six Sigma to Reinvigorate Public Corporations by Andre Pope There must be a national policy that spells out the performance metrics for public corporations. The NPCC will then be charged to evaluate the performance of each public corporation on a quarterly basis. These evaluations will then become benchmarks for judging progress and improvement. Unfortunately often in government even once good measures are set, see Millennium Development Goals, things still fail. Still this is a good goal. Oregon has done … Continue reading →

Posted in Public Sector, Six sigma | Tagged ,

Rebirth of American Industry

Posted on December 21, 2005 by John Hunter

William Waddell excellent posts on the Evolving Excellence blog are always an interesting read. He, and Norman Bodek, have published a new book, Rebirth of American Industry. Read the full Excerpt from the book [the broken link was removed]. The Evolving Excellence blog also has a post: A New Must-Read Book – From Our Own Bill Waddell [the broken link was removed]. Norman Bodek has also written: Kaikaku, The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen (with Bunji Tozawa) and The … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Tagged ,

Should GM be Removed from the DJIA?

Posted on December 21, 2005 by John Hunter

Topic: Investing Should Dow boot GM? by Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com: GM’s market capitalization has fallen to about $11 billion, less than half that of the next smallest Dow stock… “It is coming,” he said of the idea of a foreign Dow component. “This whole globalization situation is making that more and more likely.” He said he doubts that GM would be replaced as long as it is still the world’s leading automaker, but Toyota could claim that title from GM … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing | Tagged | 3 Comments

Lean Health Care: ThedaCare

Posted on December 21, 2005 by John Hunter

ThedaCare Shares Lean Secrets (link broken, so removed): ThedaCare adapted the lean business practice technique commonly referred to as Toyota Production System two years ago after a visit to the Ariens Co. in Brillion. There, ThedaCare officials saw firsthand how the process was implemented. “We were there and within 15 minutes, I knew this was the improvement system for us,” said Roger Gerard, ThedaCare’s chief learning officer. Each week, ThedaCare has several rapid improvement events or RIEs. During that process, … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management Articles

TPS v. Lean Manufacturing

Posted on December 19, 2005 by John Hunter

Great article from Superfactory, TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences [the broken link was removed] by Art Smalley: Real TPS is not just about “flow” or “pull production” or “cellular manufacturing” or any of the other catchy phrases or tools you may frequently hear. For over fifty years TPS in Toyota has been primarily concerned with making a profit, and satisfying the customer with the highest possible quality at the lowest cost in the shortest lead-time, while … Continue reading →

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

Nonprofit Baldrige Award

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

Nonprofits Can Apply for Baldrige Quality Award in 2007 [the broken link was removed]: Starting in 2007, nonprofit organizations—including charities, trade and professional associations, and government agencies—will be eligible to apply for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence.

Posted in Public Sector | Tagged

Planet Kaizen

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

Toyota has a section on their web site called Planet Kaizen [the broken link to www.toyota.com/planetkaizen was removed, this is a rare instance where they are doing us a favor by removing this poorly designed application from the internet]: “what happens when you dig a little deeper and peel back the sheet metal to discover what makes a Toyota a Toyota.” It requires Flash to view Planet Kaizen. I think it has amazingly bad visual controls (as do many flash … Continue reading →

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

Bad Visual Controls – Software

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

Bad Visual Controls Example: Software via Lean Manufacturing Blog. Funny example. If I had to use it I might use a different adjective. In the example, the software uses icons that are not obvious. The user has pasted labels on their monitor with text description of each icon. The labels are smaller than the icons. Some resources for web usability and software usability “A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would.” (that … Continue reading →

Posted in Fun, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Joel Management

Posted on December 17, 2005 by John Hunter

Topic: Management Improvement, Lean Thinking Joel Spolsky writes the excellent Joel on Software blog and runs Fog Creek Software. Recently he has been writing about process improvement of the order fulfillment process for a movie on the experience of interns at Fog Creek Software, How to Ship Anything by Joel Spolsky Shipping an international order now takes about 35 seconds, down from 3 minutes, and can be done by anyone, whether or not they have SQL and Mail Merge skills. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Visual Work Instructions

Posted on December 17, 2005 by John Hunter

Via Got Boondoggle? Shorter Text for Visual Work Instructions (link broken 🙁 so removed) by Steven Blackwell: The line worker may not even read text that seems excessive. We have spent the last eight years observing line workers using visual work instructions and asking them if they read the text. If the text is a short sentence, the answer is usually “yes.” If the text is more than one sentence long, the answer is usually “no.” Another recent post, Poka-Yoke … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, quote | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Engineering Education: China, India and the USA

Posted on December 13, 2005 by John Hunter

I just added a post, USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates, to our Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on a new report from Duke concerning data on engineering degrees from China, India and the USA: Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate. I think it is a great report. If you have any interest in this topic I strongly recommend it. Related posts: Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data Engineering Education and Innovation Joint Singapore MIT Degree Programs USA Science and Engineering … Continue reading →

Posted in China, curiouscat.com, Economics, Education, India | Tagged