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Author Archives: John Hunter
Poka-Yoke Assembly
Got Boondogle asks, Do you Read Instructions Carefully Before Assembly? Nope, I don’t. I expect I can make a quick judgment if I really need to or I basically get it and can put things together well enough. I expect the supplier to make very obvious anything critical. I am much less likely to read instructions that seem to be written by a lawyer, as I imagine are many others. If they provide simple, clear instructions I will use them … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Customer focus, Deming, Management, Systems thinking
Tagged mistake-proofing
1 Comment
Hopeful About India’s Manufacturing Sector
Why Am I Hopeful About India’s Manufacturing Sector [the broken link was removed] by Indra: As World Economic Forum Founder and Chairman Professor Klaus Schwab said in recently held India Economic Summit, 2005, “It is indeed important for India to excel globally not only in the services sector but also in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing in India has become much more sophisticated with the introduction of high technology in many of its production processes. A key priority for India is … Continue reading
The 70 Percent Solution
The 70 Percent Solution [the broken link was removed] by John Battelle, an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We spend 70 percent of our time on core search and ads. We spend 20 percent on adjacent businesses, ones related to the core businesses in some interesting way. Examples of that would be Google News, Google Earth, and Google Local. And then 10 percent of our time should be on things that are truly new. An example there would be … Continue reading
Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, quote, Systems thinking
Tagged Creativity, Google, Innovation, managing people, respect for people
4 Comments
Drucker Opinion Essays from the WSJ
The Wall Street Journal has posted selected opinion essays by Peter Drucker [the broken link was removed] along with several tributes to Drucker. The Five Deadly Business Sins (article removed so link removed), 1993: the worship of high profit margins and of “premium pricing” mispricing a new product by charging “what the market will bear cost-driven pricing slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday feeding problems and starving opportunities Is Executive Pay Excessive?, 1977. In 1977, his answer was, … Continue reading
Six Sigma Hospitality
The Six Sigma Syndrome [the broken link was removed] by Saurabh Jaggi Starwood has run over 3000 projects worldwide to date in areas such as productivity, menu re-design, resort concierge, email marketing and launching a worldwide sales initiative. Another of its chain of hotels, The Westin Turnberry resort in Scotland won the IQPC’s 5th Annual European Six-Sigma summit in London in April 2004. It won the European award in the category ‘Design for Six Sigma’ for a reservation project.
Posted in Management Articles, Six sigma
Tagged Six sigma
Innovate or “Play it Safe” to Avoid Risk
The Xooglers blog has some really interesting posts. In one, “But, but, that’s just crazy talk!” [the broken link was removed], Doug Edwards discusses a great example of what true leadership is about. In my defense, my background conspired against me. Past public relations debacles had taught me always to evaluate worst-case scenarios before considering the possible benefits of any new initiative. “First, do no harm” had become my mantra. This is the reality of many people. There are many … Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Google, Innovation, Management, quote
Tagged decision making, Innovation, leadership, management, risk
2 Comments
Data Based Decision Making
Acumen visits Google: As a first step, we hope to collaborate with interested Googlers to find better ways to learn what works around the world. Identifying powerful solutions to poverty that are useful to people in different settings, and that are market-driven, scalable, and sustainable, is our greatest challenge. Second, we’re hoping to strengthen how the world measures both social and financial returns to investments in delivering critical goods and services to the poor. Like Google, we hold a deep … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Google, Management
Tagged critical thinking, Data, evidence based management, Google
4 Comments
Project Kaizen Co-Blogging Week
The Project Kaizen Co-Blogging Week has started. The posts in the first day have been interesting. Including, Improving Workgroups: The result is individuals doing individual work. People create their own training materials because the corporate materials “are proprietary” and there’s too much risk in sharing them (a ridiculous concept since the company in question hardly invented lean, the slides were all borrowed from outside lean knowledge, yet now this company doesn’t want to follow Toyota’s model by sharing). There’s an … Continue reading
Posted in Lean thinking, Management
Performance of People and Appraisal
The Statistical and Scientific Thinking blog, by John Dowd, has several interesting posts on the Performance of People [the broken link was removed]: Why can’t performance be numerically rated and ranked? It can’t be defined operationally, it can’t be measured with any degree of precision, it can’t be separated from other effects, and it is destined to vary over time in any case. Any one of these factors present significant (if not insurmountable) problems itself. Combined the problems create an … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect
Tagged managing people, Performance Appraisal, Psychology
Google: Ten Golden Rules
Google: Ten Golden Rules [the broken link was removed] by Eric Schmidt and Hal Varian: At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of “knowledge workers.” After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will “strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers’ way.” Those that succeed will attract the … Continue reading
Posted in Google, Innovation, Management
Tagged Drucker, Google, Innovation, knowledge work
7 Comments
Ford’s Wrong Turn
Mr. Ford’s Wrong Turn, Why U.S. Automakers Can’t Blame Japan by James P. Womack: What makes this claim so extraordinary is that Japanese companies, led by Toyota Motor Corp., are thrashing Ford by building vehicles in North American factories with North American-made parts and North American workers, who receive American-style wages and health benefits. And increasingly, these Japanese brand vehicles are engineered in America by Americans. Consider a few facts about Toyota. About 65 percent of the vehicles the firm … Continue reading
Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing
Tagged lean manufacturing, Toyota, Womack
2 Comments
Gary Hamel’s Idea Hatchery
Gary Hamel’s Idea Hatchery [the broken link was removed] by Whitney Sparks: Q: So how do you hope to change the standard approach to management? A: Sometimes innovation is about creating a whole new class structure. Hierarchies are not very good at getting the best out of people. Communities are where people are most likely to give their gifts, bound not by economic dependency but [with] dreams. I’d like to make business more humane. How do you create organizations where … Continue reading
Excessive Executive Pay
Topic: Management Improvement Via Christian Sarkar [the broken link was removed], Too Many Turkeys, The Economist: Executive compensation in America – already far ahead of the rest of the world, despite the best efforts of overseas managers to catch up – is now rising inexorably again. In fiscal year 2004 the total compensation of the median American company boss rose in every industry… according to a new report by the Conference Board, a research organisation. In the big companies that … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Psychology, Respect
Tagged business, curiouscat, deadly diseases, executive pay, leadership, overpaid executives, Systems thinking
18 Comments
Landscaping Firm Following Deming
Building a landscaping firm Brickman by Brickman [the broken link was removed] by Steve Berberich Each Brickman branch operates with a standard production model that the company developed in the late 1970s with consultant and renowned statistician W. Edwards Deming, who is best known for helping Japanese manufacturing recover from World War II and improving U.S. productivity during the war. Scott Brickman said the model emphasizes continuous improvements in communication with its nearly 10,000 commercial customers and education and cultivation … Continue reading
IQ and Muda: Information Quality Eliminates Waste
IQ and Muda: Information Quality Eliminates Waste [the broken link was removed] by Larry English The article provides an explanation of each of these 9 types of muda and relates them to information quality: There are nine types of muda in information quality: Muda of overproduction Muda of inventory Muda of repair/rejects Muda of motion Muda of processing Muda of transport Muda of waiting Muda of process failure caused by defective information Muda of wrong or suboptimized decisions caused by … Continue reading
Posted in Books, IT, Management
Tagged IT, waste
Firefox 1.5 and Rollyo
The new Firefox 1.5 web browser is available. It is a great browser I have been using for at least a year. It is free, secure and has great features. You can also try a search “roll” I have setup for the various curiouscat.com sites (via Rollyo) [that no longer works but I have setup similar customized search via Google]. This allows you to search those sites I have included in the “roll” and only those sites. I have also … Continue reading