Category Archives: Lean thinking

Toyota’s Effort to Stay Toyota

Posted on November 22, 2007 by John Hunter

Toyota’s All-Out Drive To Stay Toyota “We are making every effort not to lose our DNA,” says Shigeru Hayakawa, president of Toyota Motor North America. … Just in case St. Angelo forgets any of his Toyota training, he has someone watching his back. His retired predecessor, Gary Convis, still gets paid to advise him. That’s an idea Toyota imported from Japan, where the company asks retiring engineers to stick around to mentor young employees. The ranks of these old-timers are … Continue reading →

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

Insights from Jim Womack

Posted on November 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Jim Womack provides great insights in a recent interview, Thought Leaders — Lean On Me: All the Japanese car companies did the quality thing based on the Deming Prize criteria and so forth back in the 1960s and 70s. What that meant was, they tried to get from end-of-the-line inspection to inspection at the source. And they did a pretty good job on that, no question about it. … Toyota has a supplier management system that is still the best-in-class, … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management

Engineering Innovation for Manufacturing and the Economy

Posted on November 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Editorial: Engineering Innovation, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: They are the invisible heroes in business, the men and women who make innovation possible. They are people like Mary Ann Wright at Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, the former chief engineer for the Ford Escape hybrid who is leading a team bent on establishing world leadership in hybrid battery systems. Or Werner Zobel, a Modine Manufacturing engineer working in Germany who hatched the idea for a new cooling system that the Racine-based company believes … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Public Sector, Science, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Win a 2 day visit from Norman Bodek

Posted on November 7, 2007 by John Hunter

Shingo Sweepstakes: The grand prize is a 2 day visit of your organization by Norman Bodek, 2 Free admissions to the 20th Annual Shingo Prize, 5 copies of Dr. Shigeo Shingo’s latest book and more. Related: Zero Defects – Constant Change and Growth – 2007 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing – Lean Podcast with Bodek – Toyota Production System History

Posted in Lean thinking, Management

Bringing Lean Principles to Service Industries

Posted on October 27, 2007 by John Hunter

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries by Julia Hanna “One of the important lessons we’ve seen on the ground is how Wipro approached the launch of this lean initiative,” Staats says. “They didn’t come out with big banners and say, ‘OK, today your work is lean work, and yesterday it wasn’t.’ They started with a small group and recruited other people from there. It was a very controlled experimentation.” In their research, Staats and Upton document how the use of … Continue reading →

Posted in India, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Software Development

Bring Me Solutions Not Problems

Posted on October 1, 2007 by John Hunter

My comments on: No Problem Without a Solution [I removed the broken link] I understand that most managers feel that their employees should not bring them problems. Instead, expressed in the most positive way, employees should fix things or bring possible improvements. However, I think that is poor management. I understand there may well be more detail than you provide that adds a more sensible (but more complex) reaction that stated in your post about your situation. However, there are … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Danaher Expands Lean Thinking One Acquisition at a Time

Posted on September 24, 2007 by John Hunter

Sybron Focuses on Operations Nearly 18 months into becoming part of Danaher Corp., life is different at Sybron Dental Specialties Inc. “Sybron was really a sales and marketing focused organization … and operations (were) part of supporting that,” said Don Tuttle, president of specialty products for Sybron, which is moving from Orange to Anaheim next year. “What Danaher brought to us, and has been successful with, is bringing us an operations focus.” Sybron has adopted principles known as Danaher Business … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing

Tesco in the USA

Posted on August 22, 2007 by John Hunter

Tesco is opening Fresh and Easy stores in the USA: starting with Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Tesco is the third largest retailer in the world and well known for using lean management methods. I added Tesco to my long term stock picks last year (and Warren Buffett owns about $2 billion dollars worth, too). Their recent press release offers hope for Tesco operating with lean thinking in the USA: “No where is our approach to serving … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

Improvement Tools and Improving Management

Posted on August 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Tools are just tools [the broken link has been removed] by Lee Fried We have begun to shift away from a tool driven approach to one more centered on improving our management systems. This makes the work far more difficult, yet far more rewarding. Great post. Great goal; and quite a challenge. My personal belief is while you are trying to make this change (which takes years) to become an organization that acts as a system you must balance education … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Education, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged , | 1 Comment

More Bad Customer Service Examples :-(

Posted on August 19, 2007 by John Hunter

It is sad to see so many examples of bad customer service. I wish enough companies would adopt management improvement principles so that at least I could avoid dealing with the others altogether. Here are 2 more bad examples from the Washington post today. Cellphone Contracts – Hard to Get off the Hook Fed up with dropped calls and a string of defective cellphones, Corey Taylor said he became irate when he learned he’d have to pay $175 to get … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Public Sector | 2 Comments

Lean Dentist Podcast

Posted on August 8, 2007 by John Hunter

This podcast by Mark Graban with Dr. Sami Bahri, “The World’s First Lean Dentist” is well worth listening to. It offers a wonderful example of how to apply lean ideas (I really appreciate how obvious the focus on learning and thinking has been key to becoming a lean organization). Dr. Bahri does a great job of explaining how he learned and applied lean thinking with a big focus on one patient flow. He worked with Deming’s ideas and TQM… before, … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management, webcast

Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno

Posted on August 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno is an excellent management book. Taiichi Ohno is known as the father of the Toyota Production System (TPS), also called lean manufacturing. He dictated the text to the Japan Management Association (in a series of interviews in 1982), which gives the book a sense of listening to him talk about the ideas. I found the conversational tone made it very easy to read and reminiscent of Dr. Deming’s tone in many places. Ohno focused a … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Help Wanted: Lean Manufacturing Experts

Posted on August 4, 2007 by John Hunter

Is There A Lean Employee Deficit?: Two recent articles in respected manufacturing publications highlighted a topic of interest for us at Ultriva: The difficulty of finding and retaining manufacturing talent. The first was an article from the American Society for Quality published last week in Reliable Plant about the aggressive luring of Lean manufacturing experts to the services sector. The article quotes Jack Stiles, the president of an executive search firm, that experts are enjoying 20 to 30% pay raises … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Lean thinking, Management | 2 Comments

Management by Walking Around

Posted on July 18, 2007 by John Hunter

Management by walking around (MBWA) is based on the concept that a manager needs to actually understand what is really going on – not just view reports in an office. By seeing the actual state of affairs they can better understand what management improvements are actually doing where work is being done. Lean thinking includes a great deal on the importance of going to the gemba to make decisions. Anyone interested in MBWA should look at some of that material … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, Management | 4 Comments

From Lean Tools to Lean Management

Posted on July 11, 2007 by John Hunter

From lean tools to lean management [the broken link was removed] by Jim Womack: The attraction of tools is that they can be employed at many points within an organization, often by staff improvement teams or external consultants. Even better, they can be applied in isolation without tackling the difficult task of changing the organization and the fundamental approach to management. I often say that managers will try anything easy that doesn’t work before they will try anything hard that … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , ,

New Articles on Toyota Management

Posted on July 8, 2007 by John Hunter

Harvard Business Review has a new article on Toyota that both the Elegant Solutions blog (by Matthew E. May author of Elegant Solutions: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation – via: lean blog) and Got Boondoggle, have raved about. Amazing HBR Interview with Toyota President Watanabe on Elegant Solutions: Pick up the latest issue of Harvard Business Review (July/August double issue) for a real treat: a fantastic interview with Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. This is a ground-breaking piece of journalism and … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 2 Comments