Category Archives: Lean thinking

Making Suits in the USA

Posted on March 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Trying On Toyota’s Methods (site broke link so I removed it): Keeping Abboud’s suit manufacturing in the United States has advantages, such as reduced shipping time, he said. He also believes overseas workers can’t beat the quality and price of the suits Abboud produces in New Bedford, which sell in Nordstrom Inc. and Bloomingdale’s for $700 to $1,000. Abboud says its sales are about $400 million a year. The company is doing fine, but management says the U.S. factory has … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Lean thinking, Management

Kanban In Software Engineering

Posted on March 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Kanban in Action [the broken link was removed]: The kanban system allows us to deliver on my 3 elements of my recipe for success: reduce work-in-progress (in fact it limits it completely); balance capacity against demand (as new CRs [change requests] can only be introduced when a kanban card frees up after a release); and prioritize. We hold a business prioritization meeting once per week with vice presidents from around the company. They get to pick new CRs from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Process improvement, Quality tools, Software Development | Tagged

Change Health Care

Posted on March 8, 2007 by John Hunter

How Toyota Can Save Your Life…at the hospital by Mark Graban, another great manifesto from Change This:

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking | 1 Comment

Evolving Excellence – The Book

Posted on March 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Evolving Excellence – the book takes posts from the excellent Evolving Excellence blog by Keven Meyer and William Waddell. Those familiar with their work know that the authors provide great insight and take strong positions – they are not timid. The book is an enjoyable read and packed with great ideas focused on lean manufacturing and lean management thinking. I enjoyed the different format of reading the material presented in the blog (though I like the blog even better, linking … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Lean thinking, Management

Firing Workers Isn’t Fixing Problems

Posted on February 26, 2007 by John Hunter

I commented on a post on Evolving Excellence that Jim Jubak is a wall street guy who has good ideas. He has posted another good article: Firing workers isn’t fixing problems [the broken link was removed] Both CEOs, Edward Zander at Motorola and Jeffrey Kindler at Pfizer, of course, kept their jobs and their paychecks. According to Motorola’s latest proxy statement, Zander received a salary of $1.5 million, a $3 million bonus and $2.3 million in restricted stock in 2005. … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Interview with Mary Poppendieck

Posted on February 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Lean for Software: Interview with Mary Poppendieck: We start by asking people to draw a Value Stream Map. You start with a customer problem-need request, and you go to where that request is filled. So, you put on “customer glasses”, and now I want to watch what happens to that problem until it is back and the customer problem is solved. You draw a map or a timeline of everything that happens from the time the customer request comes in … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development | 1 Comment

New Zealand Creativity

Posted on February 22, 2007 by John Hunter

Saving money by thinking creativity and leanly. $10 wok keeps TV station on air [the broken link was removed]: Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok from the Warehouse is just as effective? This is exactly how North Otago’s newest television station 45 South is transmitting its signal from its studio to the top of Cape Wanbrow, in a bid to keep costs down. 45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed … Continue reading →

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

Danaher – Lean Thinking

Posted on February 14, 2007 by John Hunter

A Dynamo Called Danaher [the broken link was removed] DBS, as it’s called, is a set of management tools borrowed liberally from the famed Toyota Production System. In essence, it requires every employee, from the janitor to the president, to find ways every day to improve the way work gets done. Such quality-improvement programs and lean manufacturing methods have been de rigueur for manufacturers for years. The difference at Danaher: The company started lean in 1987, one of the earliest … Continue reading →

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

Sustaining Lean Momentum

Posted on February 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Sustaining Lean [the broken link was removed]: “It is an unfortunate fact that most companies are unable to sustain the gains made during their lean journeys,” said Andy Carlino, Lean Learning Center partner. “In fact, less than 37 percent of lean improvements and training actually produce meaningful and measurable results unless there has been a complete corporate culture change to lean thinking.” Smith added, “Sustaining lean is very difficult. And, let’s clarify what sustaining means – it is NOT maintaining … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles

Lean Six Sigma Efforts

Posted on February 10, 2007 by John Hunter

Lean/Six Sigma: The quest for efficiency in manufacturing [the broken link was removed]: After years of working with lean and Six Sigma principles, many companies realize that, to continue improving, they need to get suppliers and even customers involved — such as happened with Toyota. Good idea, but there is no good reason a six sigma effort didn’t do that from the start. Rather than laying off factory staff as processes have become more efficient, the firm has expanded its … Continue reading →

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

Motivating People to Change

Posted on February 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Don’t miss a nice series of posts by Jon Miller: How to Motivate People to Change – part 1, part 2, part 3. [links broken, so removed 🙁 ] Success may come in the short term when motivation is through a combination of fear and reward centering on financial safety and security, belonging to a group and achievement of status… There is some question as to whether this type of approach to motivation is sustainable, and at the very least … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , ,

Toyota Management Speech by Gary Convis

Posted on February 2, 2007 by John Hunter

Gary Convis – Management Briefing Seminars [the link that Toyota broke was removed] To be a successful automaker or supplier in today’s competitive world, I believe every single person involved in your value chain must fully understand the company’s mission and direction, and execute their roles perfectly to move toward shared goals. As an example, when a potential customer walks into a dealership, they are about to buy the second most expensive product they will ever own. This is not … Continue reading →

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

Transforming With Lean

Posted on January 31, 2007 by John Hunter

Dave Gleditsch, Chief Technology Officer, Pelion Systems, makes many excellent points in: Transforming Your Business To Lean: Lessons Learned [the broken link was removed]: First and foremost, we should always keep the customer at the forefront of the planning and implementation process. A key to success is in being able to find the customer in every single metric you choose to measure your Lean transformation progress by. Often measures become the focus and the reason for improvement is obscured. Improvement … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, quote | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Toyota’s Nick Dieltiens Discussing Lean Ideas

Posted on January 29, 2007 by John Hunter

Another YouTube video on Toyota Management (produced by a software vendor selling to Toyota Europe): Toyota’s Nick Dieltiens Discussing Lean Techniques. He is responsible for strategic planing for Lexus Europe and was previously for the lean operations office for Toyota and Lexus Europe. He discusses adopting lean thinking in sales and marketing. the consultant’s web site includes another webcast [the broken link was removed] with Nick Dieltiens. In a previous post we comment on a good article reviewing Toyota IT … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, webcast

It’s Easy Being Lean

Posted on January 23, 2007 by John Hunter

Nice article, nice title too, a bit overoptimistic maybe but still nice 🙂 – It’s Easy Being Lean [the broken link was removed]: The program advocates lean manufacturing, whose main tenet is that the processes used to produce things can be made more efficient and therefore more profitable. The steps can be as simple as bringing the machines used to create goods closer together on the plant floor. Since lean manufacturing is a permanent way of doing business, not just … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Competing On The Basis Of Speed

Posted on January 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Competing On The Basis Of Speed (webcast) [the broken link was removed] by Mary Poppendieck discussing complexity, queuing theory, and constant innovation. Google posts presentations given at the Googleplex (including this one). In this one, Mary presents lean ideas as they related to software development. Related: post on software development – lean software development – articles by the Poppendiecks – Competing on the Basis of Time

Posted in Google, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development, webcast | 1 Comment