Good post by Mark Graban: Once Again, Dell is Not TPS:
Good points.
Continue reading
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers brings us the web site: manufacturingiscool.com [the broken link was removed – maybe manufacturing isn’t cool anymore 🙁 ]. Maybe this is the answer to Bill Waddell post: We Don’t Get No Respect 🙂
From the manufacturing is cool site:
Ways to help young people find career opportunities in manufacturing and engineering. Also refer our searchable database that shows college and universities that offer manufacturing programs, options, courses or labs. There is also a list of accredited programs and options in manufacturing engineering, engineering technology or industrial technology.
The site really does have some useful and interesting material (especially for teachers). Demonstrating the coolness of manufacturing might need a little work, but this is a start.
Library becomes a lean machine [the broken link was removed] by Morgan Jarema:
Related lean thinking idea: 5s. More lean manufacturing/thinking articles.
Tabby cat terror for black bear
A black bear picked the wrong yard for a jaunt, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree – twice.Jack, a 15-pound orange and white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, often chasing small animals, but his owners and neighbors say his latest escapade was surprising.
“We used to joke, ‘Jack’s on duty,’ never knowing he’d go after a bear,”
See larger photo – AP Photo by Suzanne Giovanetti
Clawless kitty chases bear up tree [the broken link was removed] – read more on the story and see more photos.
In, How to get traffic for your blog, Seth Godin writes: “Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.” Good advice, in general. Of course he follows that up with: Write about your kids [the broken link was removed] – a sentence later. You have to learn the rules and then learn when (and how) to break them.John Hunter
Curious Cat Travels: Bear Warning sign (I will have to see about bring Jack on my hiking trips) – Bear at Yellowstone – Big Cats in Kenya
Management Advice: Which 90% is Crap? [the broken link was removed] by Bob Sutton, Stanford University:
At first, I couldn’t believe that someone as well-read as Hamel claimed an old idea was new and that he had invented it. But I eventually realized the problem wasn’t Gary Hamel, or any other individual making claims of originality. Rather, his column reflected a prevailing practice in the business knowledge business. I asked two former Fortune columnists why “Hamel’s Law” and similar claims that old ideas are brand new appear so often in the business press.Both emphasized that you couldn’t blame Hamel – that was just how things were done. Both writers even speculated that some Fortune editor probably had inserted the phrase, “Hamel’s Law,” to create the impression that the magazine publishes exciting new ideas. After all old news doesn’t sell magazines!
I share this frustration with declaring old ideas new: Management Improvement, Better and Different, Quality, SPC and Your Career, Deming and Six Sigma, Management Lessons from Terry Ryan, Everybody Wants It, Toyota’s Got It, Fashion-Incubator on Deming’s Ideas and on and on.
Topic: Management Improvement
A fun post as we head into the weekend: If Tech Companies Made Sudoku by Kathy Sierra
Frankly, we’re a little baffled that your original design was so… simple. I’m sure we all recognize that our target market demands a much more media-rich, interactive, high-action experience. Love the whole grid thing, though.
The graphic on the original post is great. You can also read about an attempt to focus IT differently: The Declaration of Interdependence [the broken link was removed] by Alistair Cockburn:
Lean manufacturing teaches us that having large inventories is inefficient. It also teaches us that the overall efficiency of a process improves as the batch size passed from stage to stage is reduced. Today this has become accepted in most (but not all) manufacturing circles, yet many people may be surprised that it also applies to software development.
We often seem to add unnecessary complexity to software; creating fragile code that is frustrating to use.
Lean Provision Is Tesco’s Secret Weapon in Battle with Wal-Mart (annoyingly Yahoo has deleted that web page so I removed the link) (update again here is the LEI press release [the broken link was removed, The Lean Enterprise Institute doesn’t see to employ long term thinking, though that is certainly part of sensible lean thinking]):
Tesco’s lean provision system combines point-of-sale data, cross-dock distribution centers, and frequent deliveries to many stores along “milk-runs” to stock the right items in a range of retail formats. These include Tesco Express convenience stores at gas stations and busy intersections; Tesco Metro (small supermarkets in cities); traditional Tesco supermarkets in cities and suburbs; Tesco Extra (“big box” superstores in suburbs); and Tesco.com for web shoppers.
Great stuff. In fact I would add Tesco to our marketocracy portfolio created as a result of our 10 stock for 10 years post. Why would, (not did)? Martketocracy won’t process purchase request for Tesco. You can view Tesco on Google Finance but you can’t add it to your portfolio.
Tesco is a retailer based in England that is expanding internationally – rapidly. They are moving into the United States in 2007. Warren Buffett picked up over $300 million worth of Tesco stock in March.
Microsoft webcast [the broken link was removed] on Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI is the process developed by the Software Engineering Institute that was heavily influenced by Quality Management) and the approach taken for continuous improvement – mapping to concepts like Six Sigma and Kaizen. Each webcast with David Anderson, is an hour long.Program information: presentation to CMMI appraisers [the broken link was removed] on the Microsoft Solutions Framework for CMMI Process Improvement.
You should pay ME – 9 Companies That Don’t Get It [the broken link was removed]:
I have been having a hell of a time canceling my old web hosting with Burstband. It’s been a few months now and I’ve called, emailed, filled out online forms, and I have never reached a live person or received confirmation that my account was shut down, and I still get charged. I finally had to file a dispute through my credit card company. It’s $8.99/month, so they owe me at least $26.97. I got to thinking about it, and I realized they really should pay me for the two hours of my life I have wasted trying to cancel the damn thing. I usually charge $80/hr for consulting so the total comes to $186.97.”
My brother has suggested several times I should arrange for companies to pay me to point out their weaknesses (and suggest improvements). I wish I could get them to do so.
Another opportunity for improvement: Why Doesn’t Google Invest More in Blogger? [the broken link was removed] – Google is great (in my opinion, of course) but still has plenty of room to improve. And Blogger is one great example of something in need of improvement. In fact in trying to post this I received:
Down for Maintenance
Blogger is temporarily unavailable due to an unexpected problem.
We will be back up as soon as possible.Update (2:20 pm PDT): We are fixing a database issue. We hope to be back up in a couple of hours.
Related:
Spreading the lean tonic [the broken link was removed]:
The focus on the whole organization is increasing moving to the forefront of discussions. While there are still huge gains to be made using lean manufacturing, the success of many efforts is leading to expanding the scope beyond the more limited early efforts. To me this is a consistent pattern.
Experts (in TQM, Deming’s idea’s, Six Sigma, BPR, Lean…) always stress the importance of involving not just others (when talking to management) but your (managers) work too. But pretty consistently management adopts new management ideas much more for others than they do themselves. And over time the talk of going beyond “factory floor” improvements becomes more common.
Fast Cycle Change in Knowledge-Based Organizations by Ian Hau and Ford Calhoun, Jun 1997 is a good example of lean thinking, eliminating waste… outside the factory floor. This is also an example of the reports I mentioned in the comments on the Kaizen research post from the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
