Category: Articles
Beyond Just Words – What Apple Could Do
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 [...]
Is it Time for Lean Government?
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, [...]
Fair Business is Moral Business
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 [...]
Poster Boys for Lean Accounting and Strategic Pricing
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 [...]
A Few Thoughts on China, Consistency, and Standardization
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 and Compression Thinking
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 [...]
Zenjidoka Iii: Building Excellent People
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 [...]
Lean It: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation
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: [...]
Zenjidoka II: The Power Of Self-Reliance
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 [...]
How to Save American Manufacturing Jobs
Throughout my career, I’ve observed the manufacturing world from a variety of perspectives: as a union worker, in engineering support functions and in various management positions at companies ranging from a global pump manufacturer to one that makes filtration products for the airline industry. Today I have yet another viewpoint as founder and senior managing [...]
