2006 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing

Posted on February 23, 2006 by John Hunter

2006 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing [the broken link was removed, I am continually amazed by organizations that do things like delete press releases, sigh, and a new waste created by poorly managing web resources]

American manufacturing continues to experience turbulent times in maintaining and growing manufacturing jobs. The only business approach that has demonstrated superior achievement is Lean Enterprise Management (the Toyota Production System), the foundation of the Shingo Prize. All 14 companies to be recognized in 2006 have clearly achieved exemplary lean manufacturing excellence.

I am sure the Delphi winning plants are going to feed the complaints raised earlier: Don’t Let Delphi Drag Down the Shingo Prize [the broken link was removed] – Delphi’s Sobering Message To Us All [the broken link was removed].

Maybe this is another victory for Alfie Kohn and Punished By Rewards. But, I think Bill Waddell said it best:

Mr. Robson would serve manufacturing and the Shingo Prize much better if he would focus his energy on what lessons can be learned. Clearly the bankruptcy of Delphi is evidence of a gaping hole in the Shingo Prize criteria, as well as in the lean body of knowledge. That is no big deal – just learn from it, improve the Prize criteria, and move on.

My guess is the lean community is going to be more upset with these awards given after Delphi announced bankruptcy.

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Global Manufacturing Data by Country

Posted on February 22, 2006 by John Hunter

I am still looking for a good source for manufacturing data by country and year. Today I found some data from the United Nations Statistics Division. The data for the top five manufacturing economies: China, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States. Figures are in current $US billion. The data used is for Mining, Manufacturing and Utilities (because China and Germany do not have manufacturing data separated out).

Country 2001 2002 2003 2004
United States 1,781 1,779 1,876 2,012
Japan 991 929 1017
China 507 551 638 754
Germany 421 449 545 613
United Kingdom 280 283 322 378

For manufacturing output only:

Country 2001 2002 2003 2004
United States 1,460 1,463 1,523 1,623
Japan 866 812 894
United Kingdom 220 223 254 298

This data shows the United States manufacturing economy is continuing to grow and is solidly the largest manufacturing economy: which contradicts what many believe. It is true manufacturing jobs are decreasing in the United States and worldwide – China is losing far more manufacturing jobs than the USA.
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Posted in China, Economics, Manufacturing, Popular, quote | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Quality Customer Focus

Posted on February 21, 2006 by John Hunter

Delivering Two Kinds of Quality [the broken link was removed] by Keith McFarland, Business Week:

What do the Japanese take for granted when it comes to quality? They take for granted that things should work as they are supposed to, and they even see an elegance to things working properly — whether it’s cars, subway schedules, traditional flower arranging, or the famous tea ceremony.

Japanese manufacturers were so obsessed with taken-for-granted quality that they created a constant stream of innovations that built on renowned quality-management consultant Ed Deming’s original concepts: lean manufacturing, just-in-time industry, and design for quality. In today’s competitive markets, manufacturers need to be very far along this quality innovation curve — or moving along it very quickly.

Related ideas:
Kano model of Customer Satisfaction: Kano saw three types of customer satisfaction: required (basic quality also threshold requirements), more is better (performance quality) and delighter (excitement quality).

Customers expectations change over time. Often what was once enough to delight a customer (remote control for a TV) becomes expected. Once a feature is expected the organization gets no credit for providing it they only risk a negative reaction if they fail to provide it.

Voice of the Customer

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John Simpson

Posted on February 20, 2006 by John Hunter


This is the best I can do to create my Simpson self. Until I have a guest appearance on the show, I guess this will have to do. You can try for yourself using the Simpson Maker [the broken link was removed]: post a comment with a link to your character.

Here is a photo of the real John Hunter (Glacier National Park, 2005):

photo of John Hunter with a river and mountains in the background

John Hunter

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Six Sigma and the Mobile Workforce

Posted on February 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Six Sigma and the Mobile Workforce [the broken link was removed] by Lynda Finn and Sue Reynard:

This type of data collection also helps process owners or managers spot systemic problems that appear across processes. For example, a process owner reviewing all field agent reports may detect problems appearing in more than one location. Now, a fix made in one location can be incorporated into MTA based systems so all agents will benefit immediately. This type of systemic leveraging of learning and improvement is what generates the biggest payoffs from Six Sigma investments.

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The Art of Work

Posted on February 20, 2006 by John Hunter

The Art of Work [the broken link was removed] by Ann Marsh:

These companies are now using Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas to learn how they can get the best out of their workers or create more compelling connections with their customers. Without flow, there’s no creativity, says Csikszentmihalyi, and in today’s innovation-centric world, creativity is a requirement, not a frill.

Excellent books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991. People enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction.

Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1997. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders to poets and artists, the author uses his famous “flow” theory to explain the creative process.

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The Deming Difference

Posted on February 19, 2006 by John Hunter

The Deming Difference (broken link removed):

Everyone wants instant pudding. Then, Dr. Deming stands up and says there is no such thing as instant pudding. That we must learn how to integrate knowledge of people, statistics, and theory of knowledge into a working, breathing organizational system. That understanding these principles will lead to transformation. Instead of being competitive, individual components of the system will, for optimization, reinforce each other. This process is not spontaneous and is discontinuous. Some days little will seem to be accomplished. Other days great breakthroughs will occur. Progress will not be predictable.

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Funding Invention Vs. Managing Innovation

Posted on February 19, 2006 by John Hunter

Funding Invention Vs. Managing Innovation [the broken link was removed] by John Hagel and John Seely Brown

But if we shift our attention from invention to innovation, we begin to see a much broader horizon. Innovation — the ability to create and capture economic value from invention — is what really drives both the economic prosperity of nations and the shareholder value of corporations.

Innovation isn’t just confined to commercialization of new products. It can also build upon creative new practices, processes, relationships, or business models, and even institutional innovations such as open-source computing — invention occurs in all these domains. And while breakthrough innovations can generate significant economic value, sustaining that value requires a capacity for continual incremental innovations.

Related Posts:

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Visible Data

Posted on February 18, 2006 by John Hunter

Effective visual signals are important for effective management improvement: lean thinking emphasizes such ideas. Top 5 Rules of Effective Measurement Boards is an excellent post on how to make measurement effective.

Take the time to find the important measures and then don’t keep data hidden in some drawer or computer file out of people’s view and therefore out of mind. Post the important data for everyone to see. Review the data as changes are made and see that the changes had the desired result. Update the measures when appropriate (for posting visibly – you will of course be measuring more than the few measures that belong on measurement boards).
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Posted in Data, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Performance Appraisal Problems

Posted on February 15, 2006 by John Hunter

The Struggle To Measure Performance [the broken link was removed], Business Week:

One company that recently decided to dump forced rankings altogether is Chemtura (CEM), a $3 billion specialty chemicals company formed by the July merger of Crompton in Middlebury, Conn., and Great Lakes Chemical in Indianapolis.

“The system forced me to turn people who were excellent performers into people who were getting mediocre ratings,” says Eric Wisnefsky, Chemtura’s vice-president for corporate finance. “That demotivates them, and they’d follow up with asking: ‘What could I do differently next year?’ That’s a very difficult question to answer when you feel that people actually met all your expectations.” Chemtura’s new process still assigns grades. But to better motivate employees in the middle, labels such as “satisfactory” have been upgraded to phrases such as “successful performance.”

As we mentioned in our previous thread on performance without appraisal more organizations are acting on what most people know – performance appraisal process is counter-productive. Deming on Performance Appraisal, Out of the Crisis, page 101:

Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review… The idea of a merit rating is alluring. the sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.

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