Lean Management Case Study

Posted on July 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Learning the Rules…Playing to Win [the broken link was removed] (pdf)

Lean concepts are taught through discussion and hands-on discovery, not lectures.” A popular part of the experience involves various simulation exercises including the beer game, which teaches that poorly organized systems will defeat the best of people, and the airplane simulation exercise, where student groups work together to build model airplanes.

On the first try at this simulation, typically one airplane is completed in the allotted time. At the end of the weeklong session — using lean methods, tools and applications – the number of completed models usually jumps to 10.

More on the beer game and drum-buffer-rope.

via: Lean Case Study: ZF Industries:

Everywhere I go, people want to hear case studies. Case studies are great. You can learn from them. You can feel like your problems aren’t so unique. You can get inspiration. The only trouble – never (ever) try to copy what someone else did.

Great advice.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement, Quality tools, Systems thinking | Tagged | 1 Comment

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Posted on July 19, 2006 by John Hunter
photo of Shaker Bedroom by John Hunter

Photos from my visit to the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. The design of the spaces (living and working) and tools was beautiful and, in fact, very much reminiscent of lean thinking ideas like 5s.

On this trip, I also visited the Abbey of Gethsemani (where Thomas Merton was a monk) and Louisville.

photo of Shaker drawers by John Hunter
Posted in curiouscat.com, Travel photos | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Birth of the Kaizen Blitz

Posted on July 19, 2006 by John Hunter

The Birth of the Kaizen Blitz [the broken link was removed]

What happens when productivity improves to the point where fewer people are needed? Bodek says a layoff is a mistake. He says that Toyota, rather than eliminating the poorest performers, takes the best performers from a cell and gives them something more creative to do. It’s the human side of lean that provides the payoff.
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Lean Podcast – Bodek

Posted on July 18, 2006 by John Hunter

The lean blog has created their first podcast (they plan to make this a monthly feature) focused on Kaizen. I recommend it and look forward to more. They take after the good interviews they have posted in the past, including: Interview with Lean Guru Norman Bodek and Q&A with Jim Womack.

I also liked that Norman Bodek talked about the way Kaizen can help employees enjoy work (“joy in work”). Work is not likely to be all fun all the time, I have learned (my father was a professor and consultant and came pretty close to that – which gave me a skewed perception). But work is a huge part of our lives it should not be something we dread.

More posts on management improvement podcasts.

Curious Cat Management Improvement Dictionary: standardization.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Respect, webcast | 1 Comment

Evolution of the PDSA Cycle

Posted on July 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Evolution of the PDSA Cycle by Ron Moen and Cliff Norman. Another historical article that explores the growth of management improvement concepts – this time the PDSA improvement cycle.

via: Deming Electronic Network [the broken link was removed]

See also:

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Kaizen the Toyota Way

Posted on July 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Excellent post: Kaizen Secrets of the Toyota Mind [the broken link was removed] by Jon Miller:

The Toyota mind asks “What does my customer want from this process?” rather than “What do I want from this process?”

The Toyota mind builds brilliant processes that enable average people to be high performers, rather than flawed processes that enable even brilliant people to be only average performers.

Jon Miller has also been posting several items on the Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei [the broken link was removed] that have excellent material, including:

If you are going to do TPS you must do it all the way. You also need to change the way you think. You also need to change how you look at things.
…
Forever and ever, neither tiring nor ceasing.
Posted in Lean thinking, Process improvement, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Comments Off on Kaizen the Toyota Way

Better Manufacturing in UK

Posted on July 16, 2006 by John Hunter

My design for better manufacturing in UK [the broken link was removed] by James Dyson:

The way forward is to make things that are better designed, better engineered and with better technology than our competitors’ products. This is the blueprint for 21st-century success embraced by Japan. It is why Japan makes six times as many patent applications as Britain and spends three times as much on research and development. The Japanese government is about to spend £128 billion on research and development. The figure in Britain is £1 billion.

He at least partially gets the idea. I think he could benefit from studying and exploring the Toyota Production System – perhaps he could attend the seminars by Toyota UK. Still he is encouraging some of the right stuff, and the innovative engineering school he is half funding seems like a very good idea.
Continue reading →

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IT Outsourcing Slowing

Posted on July 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Outsourcing bubble getting Busted: What should India do? – commenting on the 2006 Global IT Outsourcing Study

Essentially the study says the outsourcing IT will continue to grow though more slowly than it has. It also states the benefits of outsourcing have not reached the level that was predicted for a number of reasons. The study predicts vastly increased competition from China for IT outsourcing work (which reinforces the general consensus).

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the phenomenal growth in the expectations of China as an outsourcing destination. In 2004 only 8 percent of study participants expected to be outsourcing anything to China over a 3–5 year period. In 2005 this number had grown to 40 percent and in 2006 it sits at an impressive 56 percent. We believe that the hype of the Chinese outsourcing phenomenon has potentially outpaced reality.

Continue reading →

Posted in China, Economics, India, IT, Management | 2 Comments

Usability Failures

Posted on July 15, 2006 by John Hunter

‘Smart’ phones, stupid punters?

A survey* of 15,000 “faulty” devices by mobile data provider WDSGlobal found 63 per cent of the one in seven new phones which are returned have nothing wrong with them.

I believe one in seven is the model of phone. I guess if you operationally define “nothing wrong” as a failure to work as the manufacturer intended that would be true. But is that what really matters? What is the number of defects that should be counted?

The design of the phone is broken if 63% of the returns work as intended and customers still think they are broken. Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Future for Investors

Posted on July 15, 2006 by John Hunter

I completed The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New by Jeremy Siegel today. It provides a great deal of analysis of what historical stock market returns for various strategies have been. The subtitle captures the basic theme of the book. Investing in the boring old stocks that people are not excited about is what have performed best.

His basic advise is still to buy the broadest market index fund (such as the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund [the broken link was removed]). He also concludes with the advice that those returns have been beaten historically by focusing on stocks with high dividend yields and low price earnings ratios.

To me you can skim though the book pretty quickly. The book is not full of subtle concepts you might miss. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying “Jeremy Siegel’s new fact and ideas should be studied by investors” and his advise is probably is more useful than what I think.

I recommend other investing books more but The Future of Investors is also worth reading.

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