Toyota’s New Texas Plant

Posted on August 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota exec stands up to Texas heat [the broken link was removed] by Cheryl Hall:

Toyota’s new Texas plant is coming on line and will further increase Toyota’s contribution to the US economy, by buying from local suppliers and most importantly by working with local suppliers:

And he’s well-acquainted with those 21 on-site suppliers, which Toyota refers to as equal partners and a vital component in this ahead-of-the-industry endeavor.

Each of the 200,000 trucks produced annually will have up to 30,000 parts that are mostly made in surrounding buildings. Without on-site production, parts would travel up to 2,000 miles to San Antonio. A lot of things can happen to them during such a long haul. And those 18-wheelers produce emissions by the cloud-load – a key concern for Toyota, says Mr. Tajima.

“We really believe that the true meaning for our company’s existence is better quality, better performance, better reliability and being kinder to Earth, which means fuel efficiency and lower pollution, not only with the product but in the process of making it,” he says. “Otherwise, we’re just like everyone else.”

Previous post on Toyota’s supplier development. The article includes some interesting information on how Toyota has been hiring, they:
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Posted in Management, Manufacturing, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS)

Appalachian Trail Photos

Posted on August 20, 2006 by John Hunter
Cool neon green bug

I just posted some photos from a couple short hikes on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania during September 2003.

More Curious Cat Travels hiking photos: Grand Canyon National Park – Olympic National Park – Bull Run, Virginia – Yellowstone National Park – many more

Directory of travel photos by geographic locations

photo of a rock covered in moss
Posted in curiouscat.com, Travel photos | Tagged

Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs

Posted on August 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Excerpt from Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow’s Crisis…Today by Russell L. Ackoff, Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison: How Bell Labs Imagined — and Created — the Telephone System of the Future in the 1950s.

Great stuff and another example showing the obsession with “new” ideas is wasteful.

Idealized design is a way of thinking about change that is deceptively simple to state: In solving problems of virtually any kind, the way to get the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today. This ensures that you do not erect imaginary obstacles before you even know what the ideal is.

A simple idea, and a powerful one too. Ackoff always presents his ideas very well, in this book, and in many articles by Dr. Ackoff available online. I still remember Dr. Ackoff’s presenting this material at a Hunter conference years ago – great stuff.
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Posted in Books, Creativity, Deming, Innovation, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Distort the System

Posted on August 19, 2006 by John Hunter

From our post: Targets Distorting the System, Dr. Brian Joiner:

spoke of 3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult.

Another example of this in practice: Recount helps one university rise in the rankings [the broken link was removed]:

Behnke, who says he’s no fan of rankings, said he recently spoke to a provost at another institution who was capping class sizes at 19 to boost the “Classes Under 20” number.

I am sure “classes under 20” is a proxy for an intimate learning environment and interaction with knowledgeable professors that can teach well. You can’t directly measure the benefit of interaction with a professor in a small group on learning to create data to be used in ranking schools (Deming on unknown and unknowable figures). So classes with under 20 students and % of faculty with PhDs… are used as proxies for this idea.

If the proxy is the focus (as in school rankings) then distorting the system to create better looking data is a likely result. The purpose behind the action has great significance. If an institution desired to create a better learning environment and they used say a cause and effect diagram to find a group of problems and then determined one appropriate improvement step was to reduce class size (and perhaps another was to reduce the importance of tests and perhaps another was to provide professors training on effective teaching strategies) that a sensible path to improving the system.

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Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Improving the 401(k) System

Posted on August 18, 2006 by John Hunter

401(k)s are a great retirement investment vehicle (for those in the USA). Since the introduction of 401(k)s they have proved very advantageous to those saving for their retirement. See our previous post on: Saving for Retirement.

However, the experience thusfar shows a weaknesses in the system. Many people don’t even take advantage of a 401(k) to save for their retirement. From a public policy perspective it creates a huge long term problem. The economy will end up with millions of people that didn’t save for retirement and will be a drain on those who did save for retirement and the rest of the economy.

So Congress actually passed a good revision to the law. Employers will now be required to default to having employees save for their retirement in 401(k) plans. The employee still has the option to decline doing so, but now, without such a choice, they will automatically save for retirement. Great news, if like me, you believe many who would have not saved for retirement now will, and that doing so will be a good move for them and for the overall economy.

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Posted in Economics, Investing, Management | 1 Comment

Root Cause Analysis

Posted on August 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Nice post on Root Cause Analysis:

This, more rigorous and long-lasting, approach to solving problems is called Root Cause Analysis. There are several tools that can aid in the process of Root Cause Analysis. One common tool developed by Toyota is called “5-why’s”. Basically, it is a simple approach of asking “why” several times until you arrive at an atomic but actionable item. To visually view the process of the “5-why’s”, a tool called an (Ishikawa Diagram) or a (Cause-and-Effect Diagram) or a (Fishbone Diagram) is often helpful — this tool is referred by either of these.
Posted in Management, Quality tools | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Google Videocasts on Customer Focus

Posted on August 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Google provides video webcasts of speakers that present at Google [the broken link was removed]. These videos offer a great way to take part in one aspect of work at Googleplexs [the broken link was removed].

Customer Centric Web Decision Making [the broken link was removed] (videocast) by Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor – his blog)

How can we better understand customers? [the broken link was removed] by Ely Dahan (related papers by him: The Predictive Power of Internet-Based Product Concept Testing Using Visual Depiction and Animation, The Virtual Customer)

More Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog post relating to customer focus.

Posted in Customer focus, Google | Tagged | 1 Comment

Toyota Management Develops the New Camry

Posted on August 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota’s Globalization Takes Shape through the Camry, speech by Gary Convis:

So, even though I accept Mr. Friedman’s point that our world is quickly changing, I also believe many of our age-old principles will continue to apply. Principles like quality… value… trust in products… and running your business with innovation… teamwork… and continuous improvement.

So true, see: New Rules for Management? No!. The desire to act as if we have new watersheds every year is misguided and is an ineffective view for managers. Managers should understand that the “new ideas” presented in magazines and books are very rarely new, see: (Quality and Innovation). Managers should study the great amount of excellent thought on management that has existed for decades and continues to be the best guidance. New twists on old ideas are worthwhile and the rare new good ideas are also great. But managers are better off if they understand the best old ideas and the they can incorporate new twists instead of just accepting a new superficial fad.
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Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 2 Comments

Patent Review Innovation

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved.

A recent article from Money offers an interesting idea (to try anyway) for one part of the problem. Patent review goes Wiki

That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light. The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval process.

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Posted in Creativity, Economics, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | 2 Comments

Manufacturing Value Added Economic Data

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

In our post on Manufacturing and the Economy we examined global manufacturing value added economic data. The World Bank has provided updated data, for 2002, which we provide below. In, Global Manufacturing Data by Country, we explored data from the United Nations through 2004 (on a related, but different, measure of manufacturing).

Country 1990 2001 2002 1990-2002% increase*
United States 1,040,600 1,422,999 1,463,300 41
Japan 810,231 865,809 811,829 0
China 116,572 407,513 No Data 250
Germany 456,405 385,923 410,644 -10
United Kingdom 206,718 220,429 No Data 7
France 228,270 217,534 192,279 -16
Italy 247,914 203,248 216,177 -13
Korea 64,604 117,575 129,449 100
Mexico 49,992 110,381 110,667 121
India 48,807 67,143 72,681 49
World 4,412,837 5,404,373 5,446,980 23

* 1990-2001 increase if no 2002 data available.
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Posted in Data, Economics, Manufacturing, quote | 3 Comments