The New York Times created a deserved furor last week with their article describing how the U.S. supposedly can’t compete with China on manufacturing – specifically the manufacturing of Apple products. As our fellow blogger Mark Graban points out in an excellent summary of that article, we shouldn’t want to compete in that manner. The [...]
The need for Government to reign in its escalating costs is prevalent in the daily reporting of every newspaper, television and radio broadcast. One only has to look at these media reports to understand the issues facing Local, State, and Federal Government in closing budget gaps. With 46 of our 50 states running budget deficits, [...]
Zero-sum (win-lose) outcomes, in which one party gains at the expense of another, are common in business, due in part to competitive pressures, time constraints, poor business school education, and poor leadership. The means by which to achieve non-zero-sum (win-win) outcomes is difficult to fathom, so nearly all senior managers ignore that choice and are [...]
The Post Office cost structure is pretty much all fixed. Buildings, labor, trucks with steering wheels on the wrong side, fuel, and maintaining bulletin boards with many of my friends and family members pictures on them costs the same thing whether they bring me 1 piece of mail, or 20. In fact, the cost doesn’t [...]
I just returned from my annual trip to visit some customers and attend a trade show in Shanghai, China. Always an interesting experience and I personally love Asia, although I prefer the respectful humility of the Japanese and the constant happiness of the Thai and Cambodians. The latter always seem to be full of joy [...]
Compression is the art and science of maintaining quality of life while consuming far fewer natural resources doing it. That’s a very different concept of economics from those prevailing today. Business analyses and perhaps our human instincts are to grow – to expand – so everyone has a bigger piece of pie, especially me. As [...]
Jidoka is one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System, one that empowers production workers to stop the assembly line and solve problems at the moment they occur. Jidoka integrates the two guiding pillars of the Toyota Way, “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People.” Recently, Toyota has suffered some major blows to its reputation. Toyota’s [...]
Quality information and effective information systems are vital to the success of the modern enterprise. But the magnitude of IT spending on ill-conceived or poorly implemented IT projects is staggering. And the dire consequences of unstable and inflexible systems, failed projects, and chronic misalignment of IT activities with business strategy are unacceptable—and unsustainable. Editor’s note: [...]
Jidoka is one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System, one that empowers production line workers to take immediate action the moment a defect is detected. The worker who discovers the defect pulls a red cord and the entire assembly line stops. Co-workers and the supervisor rush over to that worker forming an [...]
Work That Makes Sense (WTMS) is designed to speak directly to the real experts of day-to-day work in any company – front-line associates – showing them what a visual workplace is, why it’s important to their daily work, and how to create one themselves. Based on nearly 30 years in the field, author Gwendolyn Galsworth, [...]
Information Technology is supposed to enable business performance and innovation, improve service levels, manage change, and maintain quality and stability, all while steadily reducing operating costs. Yet when an enterprise begins a Lean transformation, too often the IT department is either left out or viewed as an obstacle. What is to be done? This book [...]
Detailing the role of senior management in achieving a successful transformation to organizational excellence, Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation charts a course of simplification through the complexity often associated with managing performance improvement initiatives. It spells out the roles of key individuals on the management team—including those from [...]
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