Should GM be Removed from the DJIA?

Posted on December 21, 2005 by John Hunter

Topic: Investing

Should Dow boot GM? by Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com:

GM’s market capitalization has fallen to about $11 billion, less than half that of the next smallest Dow stock…

“It is coming,” he said of the idea of a foreign Dow component. “This whole globalization situation is making that more and more likely.”

He said he doubts that GM would be replaced as long as it is still the world’s leading automaker, but Toyota could claim that title from GM as soon as 2006.

“That would be the time to replace it, not before,” said Hirsch.

I agree removing GM makes sense, though I see no reason to wait. Whether to replace it with Toyota (market cap: $167 Billion), DaimlerChrysler or something else is an interesting question. Of course the whole idea of the Dow Jones Industrial Average pretty much outlived its usefulness decades ago. The S&P 500 has long been far better measure of the stock market but still the dow has retained its status as news worthy, for some reason (View the current dow stocks).
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Posted in Investing | Tagged | 3 Comments

Lean Health Care: ThedaCare

Posted on December 21, 2005 by John Hunter

ThedaCare Shares Lean Secrets (link broken, so removed):

ThedaCare adapted the lean business practice technique commonly referred to as Toyota Production System two years ago after a visit to the Ariens Co. in Brillion. There, ThedaCare officials saw firsthand how the process was implemented.

“We were there and within 15 minutes, I knew this was the improvement system for us,” said Roger Gerard, ThedaCare’s chief learning officer.

Each week, ThedaCare has several rapid improvement events or RIEs. During that process, people from both in and out of the area affected look at an issue – for example the daily step pattern of medical surgical technician – and find ways to cut out the waste. Team members then develop a process, put it into action and see the results.

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TPS v. Lean Manufacturing

Posted on December 19, 2005 by John Hunter

Great article from Superfactory, TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences [the broken link was removed] by Art Smalley:

Real TPS is not just about “flow” or “pull production” or “cellular manufacturing” or any of the other catchy phrases or tools you may frequently hear. For over fifty years TPS in Toyota has been primarily concerned with making a profit, and satisfying the customer with the highest possible quality at the lowest cost in the shortest lead-time, while developing the talents and skills of its workforce through rigorous improvement routines and problem solving disciplines. In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process), as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations to improve quality, cost, productivity, lead-time, safety, morale and other metrics as needed. This clear objective has not substantially changed since the first internal TPS training manual was drafted over thirty years ago.

This is a great article, I strongly recommend reading it [it is a shame they broke the link]

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

Nonprofit Baldrige Award

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

Nonprofits Can Apply for Baldrige Quality Award in 2007 [the broken link was removed]:

Starting in 2007, nonprofit organizations—including charities, trade and professional associations, and government agencies—will be eligible to apply for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest Presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence.

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Planet Kaizen

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

image of the Planet Kaizan screen - field with road through it and menu on top to navigate
Toyota has a section on their web site called Planet Kaizen [the broken link to www.toyota.com/planetkaizen was removed, this is a rare instance where they are doing us a favor by removing this poorly designed application from the internet]: “what happens when you dig a little deeper and peel back the sheet metal to discover what makes a Toyota a Toyota.”

It requires Flash to view Planet Kaizen. I think it has amazingly bad visual controls (as do many flash applications). I can’t figure out why it would be done in flash – other than some marketing person, or IT person, thought it would be cool. I certainly don’t see how kaizen practices could have produced such an application. It seems to me one of the examples of how far Toyota still has to go.

Of course, as an automobile manufacturer failing to develop web applications well, is better than failing at manufacturing cars well. I would guess that this “planet kaizen” was not created by Toyota employees but instead outsourced to someone else. If it was done internally, I think Toyota’s management of marketing with technology may be in as much need of help as GM’s entire management is. In any case the non-manufacturing parts of Toyota, while some are managed well, still have plenty of room to improve.

Posted in IT, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bad Visual Controls – Software

Posted on December 18, 2005 by John Hunter

Bad Visual Controls Example: Software via Lean Manufacturing Blog. Funny example. If I had to use it I might use a different adjective.

In the example, the software uses icons that are not obvious. The user has pasted labels on their monitor with text description of each icon. The labels are smaller than the icons.

Some resources for web usability and software usability “A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would.” (that is pretty hard [impossible actually] to accomplish when the user doesn’t have a clue what will happen).

Posted in Fun, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Joel Management

Posted on December 17, 2005 by John Hunter

Topic: Management Improvement, Lean Thinking

Joel Spolsky writes the excellent Joel on Software blog and runs Fog Creek Software. Recently he has been writing about process improvement of the order fulfillment process for a movie on the experience of interns at Fog Creek Software, How to Ship Anything by Joel Spolsky

Shipping an international order now takes about 35 seconds, down from 3 minutes, and can be done by anyone, whether or not they have SQL and Mail Merge skills. Domestic orders are even faster since they don’t need customs forms. Most of all, it’s all really fun.

Joel is a great writer and tells a interesting story about of how they improved the process. This is one of a series of articles on the process improvement around order fulfillment for the documentary made of “project Aardvark”:

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Posted in Management, Process improvement | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Visual Work Instructions

Posted on December 17, 2005 by John Hunter

Via Got Boondoggle? Shorter Text for Visual Work Instructions (link broken 🙁 so removed) by Steven Blackwell:

The line worker may not even read text that seems excessive. We have spent the last eight years observing line workers using visual work instructions and asking them if they read the text. If the text is a short sentence, the answer is usually “yes.” If the text is more than one sentence long, the answer is usually “no.”

Another recent post, Poka-Yoke Assembly (also prompted by Got Boondoggle?), also discusses the importance of well written (short) instructions.

In writing minimal text, we recommend the sentence structure, “Verb NOUN with NOUN using NOUN.” An example is given in the following illustration, “Cut CABLE to LENGTH as shown using SCISSORS.” That includes 8 words, as opposed to 82 in the original example, only 10% of the original length.

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, quote | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Engineering Education: China, India and the USA

Posted on December 13, 2005 by John Hunter

I just added a post, USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates, to our Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on a new report from Duke concerning data on engineering degrees from China, India and the USA: Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate. I think it is a great report. If you have any interest in this topic I strongly recommend it.

Related posts:

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Poka-Yoke Assembly

Posted on December 12, 2005 by John Hunter

Got Boondogle asks, Do you Read Instructions Carefully Before Assembly? Nope, I don’t. I expect I can make a quick judgment if I really need to or I basically get it and can put things together well enough. I expect the supplier to make very obvious anything critical.

I am much less likely to read instructions that seem to be written by a lawyer, as I imagine are many others. If they provide simple, clear instructions I will use them (like Ikea provided for this desk I am using now). I find many good instructions require almost no words (they use pictures very well).

As Mike Wroblewski stated in his post:

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Posted in Books, Customer focus, Deming, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged | 1 Comment