Author Archives: John Hunter

Toyota Production System in Indiana

Posted on November 29, 2005 by John Hunter

Photo by Daniel R. Patmore Via Evolving Excellence [the broken link was removed], Indiana plant president passes on lessons [newspaper also broke link so I removed it too]: Q. Is it different teaching the Toyota Production System to American team members than it is to teach it to Japanese? A. It’s not so different. Americans are eager to learn. American team members are more serious about job security, so their motivation is higher than that of the Japanese. The Japanese … Continue reading →

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

Toyota Manufacturing Powerhouse

Posted on November 28, 2005 by John Hunter

Great required reading [the broken link was removed] via Evolving Excellence, Relentless [the broken link was removed], Detroit News: As Toyota expands rapidly, it is also grappling with a shortage of skilled managers and engineers. When it decided in June to build its seventh North American assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario, officials said one reason they chose that site was because the new factory could be overseen by the team running its nearby Cambridge plant. Last month, the normally acquisition-shy … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing, Psychology, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Toyota Chairman Comments on India and Thailand

Posted on November 28, 2005 by John Hunter

Toyota Chief Comments on India, Thai Cos. [the broken link was removed] The chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that auto companies in India and Thailand may soon overtake those in Japan because of their increasing focus on quality. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration part of what keeps Toyota improving is that they do not rest on their past success. They are continually looking to improve. He said no Japanese firm has won the Deming … Continue reading →

Posted in India, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Management Improvement Flavors

Posted on November 27, 2005 by John Hunter

Lean Manufacturing Visionary Jim Womack On Frontiers Of Lean Thinking [broken link has been removed], webcast and additional questions and answers: Question: For a firm seeking to improve — what comes first? Six Sigma quality or lean implementation? James Womack: Agh! These are all the same thing. You need to start with the value stream for every product, draw a map of its current state, and ask about each step: Is it valuable? Is it capable? Is it available? Is … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, quote, Six sigma, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Not the End of Process

Posted on November 27, 2005 by John Hunter

The End of Process by Ross Mayfield If a knowledge worker has the organization’s information in a social context at their finger tips, and the organization is sufficiently connected to tap experts and form groups instantly to resolve exceptions — is there a role for business process as we know it? Yes. There are some interesting comments spurring by this post but essentially I think the post is in no way a compelling argument that process management is not a … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Innovation, Management Articles, Process improvement | Tagged ,

Google: Experiment Quickly and Often

Posted on November 25, 2005 by John Hunter

Google Thinks Small by Quentin Hardy, Forbes: Brin and Page have created a corporate organism that tackles most big projects in small, tightly focused teams, setting them up in an instant and breaking them down weeks later without remorse. “Their view is that there is much greater progress if you have many small teams going out at once,” Schmidt says. The mission overall: to collect “all the world’s information” and make it accessible to everyone. “It’s a cause.” … Hundreds … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Google, Innovation, Management, Process improvement, quote, Software Development | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

ToC Conference Recap

Posted on November 25, 2005 by John Hunter

Thoughts on TOCICO [the broken link was removed] by David Anderson: “Subordination happens first!” In the 5 focusing steps, the third step is to subordinate the rest of the system to the decision made in step 2 to fully exploit the capacity constrained resource. I had observed in my work with the XIT Sustained Engineering group (the subject of my paper for the conference), that the subordination actions always had to happen first before the constraint could be fully exploited. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management Articles, Software Development, Theory of Constraints | Tagged ,

2005 Baldrige Award

Posted on November 24, 2005 by John Hunter

The 2005 Baldrige Award recipients are: Sunny Fresh Foods, Inc., Monticello, Minn. (manufacturing) [the broken link was removed] Product rejections for SFF at all four plants have continuously declined. Reducing rework can provide significant productivity improvements: SFF’s rework reduction percentage was measured at 15 percent from 2001 to 2002, 61 percent from 2002 to 2003, and 75 percent from 2003 to 2004. DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations, New Orleans, La. (service) [the broken link was removed] The storage cost per barrel was … Continue reading →

Posted in Education | 1 Comment

Lean Forest Products

Posted on November 23, 2005 by John Hunter

On The Move NRRI Forest Products promotes ‘lean’ manufacturing processes [the broken link was removed] by Chuck Watson: “Since U.S. furniture manufacturers typically had lead times greater than four to eight weeks, China could build and ship products to the U.S. within that same timeframe, for less cost.” … His project team focuses on wood materials innovation and manufacturing, improvement in this vital industry, employing the lean manufacturing model initiated by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota) … A one-week “Kaizen Blitz” (overhaul) … Continue reading →

Posted in Management Articles | Tagged

Carnival of Lean Leadership #3

Posted on November 23, 2005 by John Hunter

Carnival of Lean Leadership #3 [the broken link was removed] from Evolving Excellence once again does a great job of collection links to posts worth reading, including: A big welcome to Norman Bodek, who has started his own blog, Kaikaku. Norman is well known for his Shingo Prize winning books. His first post is on Kaikaku and Kaizen as the “twin sisters” that can drive world class competitiveness. Six Sigma Blog adds to the holiday cheer with a post on … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles

Be Thankful for Lean Thinking

Posted on November 22, 2005 by John Hunter

Topics: Management Improvement and Economics The Dallas Federal Reserve white paper, Supply Chain Management: The Science of Better, Faster, Cheaper [the broken link was removed] by Thomas F. Siems provides a macroeconmic view of what to be thankful due to the practice of lean thinking: Through better information engineering, supply chain improvements have resulted in a reduced bullwhip effect, lower inventory levels, reduced logistics costs, and streamlined payments. These improvements appear to have helped produce macroeconomic benefits such as more … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Lean thinking, Management, Six sigma | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Performance Transformation

Posted on November 21, 2005 by John Hunter

Six steps to success – How to drive performance transformation by Gautam Kumra (India): Other companies encourage “lean” thinking, which began as an automotive-inspired and assembly-oriented methodology but which today is as established in many financial processes, service industries and parts of the public sector. “Lean” projects depend not just on rolling out new techniques but on changing basic ways of working.

Posted in India, Lean thinking, Management Articles

Innovation and Research and Development

Posted on November 20, 2005 by John Hunter

Innovation and R&D [the broken link was removed] by John Hagel: From a competitive viewpoint, what matters is the relative rate of productivity improvement. R&D spending and patent filings will matter little if they do not translate into faster productivity improvement -– in fact, they can be a significant distraction. Those who understand this will have a significant edge as competition intensifies in the global economy. I would argue innovation can be related to productivity improvement or it can be … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Innovation, Management | Tagged ,

Process Leadership

Posted on November 20, 2005 by John Hunter

Process Leadership [the broken link was removed] by Daniel T Jones: the most promising approach is to create a small team, led by a high potential executive, operating initially outside the normal departmental structure and reporting to the top. They must be free to challenge the conventional wisdom, the firm’s current assets and relationships. Their job is to evaluate the core value creating processes of the organisation from the standpoint of the customer, and to work out how to flow … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Process improvement | Tagged

The Economist on Drucker

Posted on November 20, 2005 by John Hunter

Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit: He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector – —partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers. The biggest problem with evaluating Mr Drucker’s influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom “in other words, that he is the victim of his own success. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Laurence Haughton on Peter Drucker

Posted on November 19, 2005 by John Hunter

Laurence Haughton on Peter Drucker [the broken link was removed]: He criticized organizations who issued directives to “cut 5 or 10 percent from budgets across the board.” … And I’ll bet others can find 100 additional quoted and ignored lessons from Peter Drucker just like that one … I’m sorry to say that despite all the tributes, up to now, we’ve learned very little from Peter Drucker. It is frustrating, but I wouldn’t draw that conclusion. As readers of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , ,