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Category Archives: Management Articles
Management: Geeks and Deming
Why Business Needs More Geeks [the broken link was removed] by Robert May: then along came Wall Street. Obsessed with quarterly profit increases and seeing them as disconnected from value creation, Wall Street encouraged businesses to think short-term. The things that led to value creation – things like innovation, continued learning, employee development, long-term focus – were replaced by pump-and-dump management styles. There is a great deal of similarity between this article and Deming’s ideas. Several of Deming’s 14 obligation … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Innovation, Management, Management Articles
Tagged Deming, IT, management, technology
2 Comments
Airlines Try Smarter Boarding
Airlines Try Smarter Boarding [the broken link was removed] by Dave Demerjian An airplane that spends an hour on the ground between flights might fly five trips a day,” he explains. “Cut the turnaround time to 40 minutes, and maybe that same plane can complete six or seven flights a day.” More flights mean more paying passengers, and ultimately, more revenue. Good lean thinking and faster boarding is a customer service improvement as well. Convinced that there was a statistical … Continue reading
Six Sigma and Process Drift
Quality Quandaries: Six Sigma, Process Drift, Capability Indices, and Feedback Adjustment by George Box and Alberto Luceno. This article is for the more statistically inclined. The Six Sigma specification makes an allowance of 1.5 standard deviations for process drift. Simple ways in which a major part of such drift can be removed are given. These employ feedback adjustment methods specifically designed for SPC applications. Feedback adjustment can be dangerous: tampering. In fact, I would say attempting it is likely to … Continue reading
Posted in Management Articles, Manufacturing, Process improvement, Quality tools, Six sigma, Statistics
Tagged George Box, Six sigma, SPC, Statistics, variation
Innovation at Google
Turning Limitations into Innovation [the broken link was removed] by Marissa Ann Mayer: people working on it have spent so much time and are so personally invested that it’s too painful to walk away. They often know the project is misguided, yet they see the effort through to the painful, unsuccessful end. That’s why it’s important to discover failure fast and abandon it quickly. A limited investment makes it easier to walk away and move on to something else that … Continue reading
Lean Thinking Misconception
Office Furniture Companies Now Leaner [the broken link was removed] Steelcase, the largest of the nation’s office furniture companies, cut thousands of jobs, consolidated manufacturing operations and started relying more on third-party suppliers and outsourcing as it shifted toward a leaner and more flexible manufacturing model popularized by Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. This does not convey true lean thinking. It is a shame so many think lean is equal to “reducing staff.” Lean is about removing waste. Removing waste … Continue reading
Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Manufacturing
Tagged lean manufacturing, Lean thinking
1 Comment
Production Preparation Process
The Top 5 Reasons for Using Production Preparation Process (3P) [the broken link was removed] by Jon Miller: Production Preparation Process (3P) is one part of an overall Lean design approach that includes QFD, design reviews, and post-start up monitoring by a cross functional team to kaizen any bugs in the new system. The benefits of Production Preparation Process are a cross-functional team approach, rapid testing of ideas and the embedding of Lean manufacturing principles into process and product design.
Posted in Lean thinking, Management Articles, Quality tools
Tagged Quality tools
Quality Conversation with Gary Convis
Quality Conversation with Gary Convis by Norman Bodek: There are two pillars; one is continuous improvement. You might not call this a human issue exactly, but Toyota’s success rests on the need for all employees, all management, to be looking for and striving for continuous improvement and never being satisfied. … We believe very strongly in what the Japanese call “genchi genbutsu,” the foundation of Toyota’s engineering strategy, which means “Go, see, confirm and be aware with your own eyes.” … Continue reading
Creativity Overflowing
Creativity Overflowing [the broken link was removed] : It was clear that Whirlpool needed to reinvent its corporate culture. To do so, it had to figure out the answers to basic questions that managers everywhere struggle with: How do you define innovation? How do you measure success? How do you teach people to be creative? Related: Managing Innovation Deming on Innovation How Whirlpool Defines Innovation
Posted in Creativity, Management Articles
Stop Demotivating Employees
Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation [broken link removed – Harvard is extremely bad about breaking links, which is an indication of how little they think about anything but the short term] by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer from the Harvard Management Update: Most companies have it all wrong. They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them. Clear, simple and right. Douglas McGregor explored this topic well in 1960. He explained … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Popular, Psychology
Tagged management, managing people, Psychology, respect for people, short term thinking
18 Comments
Lean Accounting: What’s It All About?
Lean Accounting: What’s It All About? [the broken link was removed] by Brian H. Maskell and Bruce L. Baggaley: Companies using Lean Accounting have better information for decision-making, have simple and timely reports that are clearly understood by everyone in the company, they understand the true financial impact of lean changes, they focus the business around the value created for the customers, and Lean Accounting actively drives the lean transformation. This helps the company to grow, to add more value … Continue reading
Quality and Costs
Finding the balance between quality and cost [the broken link was removed] by Thomas Nolan Maureen Bisognano One of the steps toward a system for improving value is recognizing that waste removal is an essential component of that system, not just a by-product of defect reduction. To alleviate discomfort with setting aims for cost reduction, senior leaders should: Set aims for cost reduction while also mandating that quality must be maintained or improved by the effort. In the article they … Continue reading
Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Quality tools
Tagged management, Quality tools
The World’s Most Innovative Companies
The World’s Most Innovative Companies [the broken link was removed] : Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. Most important, as the Internet and globalization widen the pool of new ideas, it’s about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time. … Consumers increasingly are doing the innovation themselves. Consider Google Inc. (GOOG), our No. 2 … Continue reading
Posted in Innovation, Management Articles
Tagged Innovation
Lean Material Handling
Don’t Ignore your Water Spider a great post by Mike Wroblewski: The second night was little better and I quickly evaluated the improvements from the night before. Later that second night, I made more improvements. Each day, I continued the cycle of experimenting with the improvements and making adjustments to see what worked best. By the end of the week, my pedometer reading hit only 10,000 steps or five miles and not one line operator had to get their own … Continue reading
Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing
The Art of Customer Service
The Art of Customer Service [the broken link was removed] by Guy Kawasaki: 4. Don’t point the finger. This is the flip side of taking responsibility. As computer owners we all know that when a program doesn’t work, vendors often resort to finger pointing: “It’s Apple’s system software.” “It’s Microsoft’s ‘special’ way of doing things.” “It’s the way Adobe created PDF.” A great customer service company doesn’t point the finger–it figures out what the solution is regardless of whose fault … Continue reading
Seduce Them With Six Sigma Success
Seduce Them With Success [the broken link was removed – sadly ASQ continues to increase their impeding of the access to material on quality management, in direct conflict with their professed mission] by Jay Arthur: Instead the change agents are going around talking to operational managers, learning their problems and offering to help solve them. Then, using the tools of Six Sigma, they find remarkable, unexpected solutions that reduce costs and increase speed and profitability. Oddly enough, the people on … Continue reading
Posted in Management, Management Articles, Six sigma
Tagged Six sigma
Lean Thinking Needed
Bank Wire Transfers vs. FedEx Delivery My goal was to give them all the paperwork, ensure I had sufficient funds, and schedule the transfer such that the money arrives in the sellers’ account on a particular date next week. But they can’t do that. They cannot hold the paperwork for any amount of time. They’ll process it the same day I turn it in. I guess I can understand that. They’re a bank, not a scheduling service. However, they can’t … Continue reading
Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles