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Management Improvement Carnival #1

Posted on December 7, 2006 by John Hunter

There have been a number of great post recently about management improvement:

Amazon’s Long Public Haul by Kevin Meyer – “Amazon has now been around a while and has a loyal following. Their culture is apparently deep, at least for the most part. But that does not guarantee long-term success.”
Jeff Bezos Risky Bet Isn’t New by Peter Abilla – “Guess what everybody — Bezos’ Risky Bet isn’t new. Amazon has been doing that for years, but they’re just now opening services up to the masses.”
How to Put Kaizen into Your Culture by Jon Miller – “The reason we can make our living is because we serve our customers… Improvement is everyone’s job… The current condition is unacceptable, no matter how good we are.”
Choices = Headaches by Joel Spolsky – “Inevitably, you are going to think of a long list of intelligent, defensible reasons why each of these options is absolutely, positively essential. Don’t bother. I know.”
Two podcast interviews by Mark Graban: Jim Womack on lean in China (podcast) and Norman Bodek on Educating Leadership
Using Quality Tools to Identify Root Cause by Jay Marino – “One of the steps of the PDSA cycle is “identifying root cause” and includes several quality tools to help identify the “culprits” in a system including: Cause and Effect Diagram; Relations Diagram; and the 5 Whys.”

Posted in Carnival, Customer focus, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management | 5 Comments

Ritz Carlton and Home Depot

Posted on December 6, 2006 by John Hunter

Don MacAskill writes of his great service from Ritz-Carlton [the broken link was removed] and horrible service from Home Depot. Neither result is surprising, see related posts below. On the Ritz:

The next day, Ritz employees were still greeting us in the halls by our name and wishing us “Happy Anniversary”. The bottom line: We felt special. We felt pampered. We felt like the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ritz-Carlton knew us personally and really cared about making sure we were happy. They’ve earned a customer for life.

Ritz-Carlton’s motto [the broken link was removed, sadly while they strive to be ladies and gentlemen Ritz-Carlton hasn’t learned basic web usability practices such as not breaking web links] is “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” And they actually turn those words into reality. They are not platitudes with no action. The system is guided toward achieving that vision.

Worst. Service. Ever: Home Depot & HOMExperts [the broken link was removed] (which includes videos of NBC investigation of customer service problems [the broken link was removed]):

As the CEO of a company that strives to provide top-notch customer service, this has been incredible to watch. At no time during the process, other than the design and purchasing phase, have we felt taken care of, or even like our satisfaction was even a consideration. I wish I could say that the experience has been highly educational, like my visit to the Ritz-Carlton, but I have to imagine that any human being would realize that this is ludicrously bad customer service. The two companies involved, The Home Depot and their contractors, HOMExperts, must have some serious problems internally.

Related: Customer Focus at the Ritz – Effective Leadership Strategies are Driven by Total Quality Management (TQM) Principles [the broken link was removed] – 1999 Ritz Baldrige Application Summary [the broken link was removed] – Not Lean Retailing – More on Obscene CEO Pay

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged aim, culture, Customer focus, managing people, organization as a system | 3 Comments

Womack on Lean in China

Posted on December 5, 2006 by John Hunter

From the Lean blog another valuable podcast: Lean in China with Jim Womack. He is not impressed with the state of lean in China yet. Lean Enterprise China [the broken link was removed] has been established to aid the adoption of the best management practices in China.

Read articles by Jim Womack

Posted in China, Economics, Lean thinking, webcast | Tagged China, podcast, Womack | 1 Comment

Toyota Production System for Sales…

Posted on December 4, 2006 by John Hunter

Corporate profile: the Toyota Production System [the broken link was removed] by Sarah Perrin:

Within Toyota itself, non-production personnel support the TPS approach. “We very much value the Toyota way,” says David Betteley, managing director of Toyota Financial Services (UK) and vice president operations for Europe and Africa. “The key values of the Toyota way are teamwork, respect, challenge, kaizen and genchi genbutsu.

“You produce a new product and it can be replicated by a competitor almost immediately, so you have to be always innovating. We are very dealer focused. We have to provide not only a competitive service pricewise to dealers, but also be competitive in terms of the length of time it takes to deal with things. We have to be moving and changing all the time and never sit still.”

Applying the TPS to non-production areas of the business isn’t easy, of course. “It’s a challenge converting these best practices in Toyota that have been developed for production and moving them down into sales and marketing, which is what we do,” says Betteley.

It is nice to see this article in Accountancy Age. One more nudge toward lean accounting.

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

Common Cause Variation

Posted on November 30, 2006 by John Hunter

Every system has variation. Common cause variation is the variation due to the current system. Dr. Deming increased his estimate of variation due to the system (common cause variation) to 97% (earlier in his life he cited figures around 80%). Special cause variation is that due to some special (not part of the system) cause.

The control chart (in addition to other things) helps managers to avoid tampering (taking action on common cause variation as though it were a special cause). In order to take action against the results of common cause variation the performance of the system the system itself must be changed. A systemic improvement approach is needed.

To take action against a special cause, that isolated special cause can be examined. Unfortunately that approach (the one we tend to use almost all the time) is the wrong approach for systemic problems (which Deming estimated at 97% of the problems).

That doesn’t mean it is not possible to improve results by treating all problems as some special event. Examining each failure in isolation is just is not as effective. Instead examine the system that produced those results is the best method. The control chart provides a measurement of the system. The chart will show what the process is capable of producing and how much variation is in the system now.

If you would like to reduce the variation picking the highest data values (within the control limits) and trying to study them to figure out why they are so high is not effective. Instead you should study the whole system and figure out what systemic changes to make. One method to encourage this type of thinking is asking why 5 times. It seeks to find the systemic reasons for individual results.

Related: SPC – History – Understanding Variation by Tom Nolan and Lloyd Provost (highly recommended) – Deming on Management

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Quality tools, Theory of Constraints | Tagged common cause, Data, Deming, management concepts, problem solving, Process improvement, variation | 2 Comments

What Could we do Better?

Posted on November 29, 2006 by John Hunter

At the Hunter Conference, years ago, a speaker (I forget who) talked about how to get useful feedback. He discussed how asking “how is everything” normally will get the response: “fine” (which is often that is exactly what the staff wants so they can move on without wasting any time). However, if you really want to improve that doesn’t help.

He explained how he worked with Disney to improve their restaurants. Using the “how is everything” question had not alerted the restaurant to any issues. So he visited the tables with the manager and asked – “What one thing could we do to improve?” Over 50% of the people said the rolls were stale: clear information that is actionable. And in fact they were able to adjust the system to remove that problem. A small thing, in this case, but a clear example of a good method to help target improvement.

To encourage useful feedback, specifically give the customer permission to mention something that could be improved. What one thing could we do better?

This post was sparked by Seth’s post: This must be hard. I think he was on the right track, but I think the results could be even better using a question like: what one thing could we do better?

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Popular, Quality tools | Tagged continual improvement, curiouscat, Customer focus, Deming, Process improvement, Psychology | 9 Comments

Why Use Designed Factorial Experiments?

Posted on November 28, 2006 by John Hunter

One-Factor-at-a-Time Versus Designed Experiments (site broke link so I removed it -when will people learn how to manage web content?) by Veronica Czitrom:

The advantages of designed experiments over [One Factor at a Time] OFAT experiments are illustrated using three real engineering OFAT experiments, and showing how in each case a designed experiment would have been better. This topic is important because many scientists and engineers continue to perform OFAT experiments.

I still remember, as a child, asking what my father was going to be teaching the company he was going to consult with for a few days. He said he was going to teach them about using designed factorial experiments. I said, but you explained that to me and I am just a kid, how can you be teaching adults that? Didn’t they learn it in school? The article is a good introduction to the idea of why one factor at a time experiments are an ineffective way to learn.

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Six sigma | 1 Comment

The Illusion of Understanding

Posted on November 25, 2006 by John Hunter

The “Illusion of Explanatory Depth”: How Much Do We Know About What We Know? (broken link 🙁 was removed) is an interesting post that touches on psychology and theory of knowledge.

Often (more often than I’d like to admit), my son… will ask me a question about how something works, or why something happens the way it does, and I’ll begin to answer, initially confident in my knowledge, only to discover that I’m entirely clueless. I’m then embarrassed by my ignorance of my own ignorance.
…
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if it turns out that the illusion of explanatory depth leads many researchers down the wrong path, because they think they understand something that lies outside of their expertise when they don’t.

I really like the title – it is more vivid than theory of knowledge. It is important to understand the systemic weaknesses in how we think in order to improve our thought process. We must question (more often than we believe we need to) especially when looking to improve on how things are done.

If we question our beliefs and attempt to provide evidence supporting them we will find it difficult to do for many things that we believe. That should give us pause. We should realize the risk of relying on beliefs without evidence and when warrented look into getting evidence of what is actually happening.

I commented on in this for Science and Engineering blog.

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged critical thinking, Psychology, theory of knowledge | 6 Comments

Applying Lean Tools to University Courses

Posted on November 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Take a look at an interesting series of posts on Applying Lean Tools to University Courses by Luke Van Dongen:

We have discovered that creating a common experience in the classroom is absolutely essential. To accomplish this we implemented a modified production simulation exercise and in doing so, bring the opportunity to Go & See to the students. These types of simulations are quite common and are usually done with building blocks or paper airplanes. We chose paper airplanes and created a simulation that we run with the class as part of our very first class session. The exercise takes about 4 hours to run, during which time students build paper airplanes in groups of 4 or 5.

Good stuff. There should be much more simulation in education in my opinion. It is effective, and as mentioned, can be used to tie concepts back to a shared experience. Some worthwhile articles on quality improvement in education: Using Systems Thinking To Improve Education [the broken link was removed] by Maury Cotter, The Trouble With “Back-to-Basics” and “Tougher Standards” by Alfie Kohn, Teaching Quality Improvement by Quality Improvement in Teaching [the broken link was removed] by Ian Hau, Applying Total Quality Management Principles To Secondary Education [the broken link was removed] by Kathleen Cotton, Using QFD to Design a TQM Course by Glenn Mazur.

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

From Lean Tools to Lean Management

Posted on November 22, 2006 by John Hunter

From lean tools to lean management (link broken by site so I removed it) by Jim Womack:

Only management by science through constant experimentation to answer questions can produce sustainable improvements in value streams. (Toyota’s A3 is a wonderful management tool for putting science to work and I’ll have more to say about it in the next few months.)

Please understand: Lean tools are great. We all need to master and deploy them, and our efforts of the last 15 years to do so are not wasted. But just as a carpenter needs a vision of what to build in order to get the full benefit of a hammer, we need a clear vision of our organizational objectives and better management methods before we pick up our lean tools.

Exactly right, as usual.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Comments Off