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Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Deming’s Ideas at Markey’s Audio Visual

  Mark Miller, General Manager, Markey’s Audio Visual spoke on Markey’s experience adopting Deming’s ideas.

  • Markey’s needs to anticipate the changing needs of customers and anticipate those needs
  • Unknown and unknowable – not really unknown just un-measurable (again taught to all employees)
  • Gemba – where the real work gets done (the customer interaction – he stressed time and again that the key to their success was Markey’s employees interaction with customers – Markey’s aims to provide the best customer experience the customer has with any company)
  • Break down barriers between departments – Markeys doesn’t charge internally. Indianapolis looses money – they own the high end equipment used by the other offices.
  • Intrinsic motivation v. Extrinsic motivation – he has the chart from page 122 of New Economics in Deming’s handwriting on his wall.

  continue reading: Deming’s Ideas at Markey’s Audio Visual
• Why Fix the Escalator?

  I think we all (including me) have to be careful when we make judgments of those we respect or find wanting. It seems our judgments often have more to do with our opinion of the person or company, than the specific behavior we believe we are judging. At times this is wise, I believe, but you should remember the basis for your opinion.

  continue reading: Why Fix the Escalator?
• Marketing in a Lean Company

  The company needs to be viewed as one interdependent system not independent departments. The system needs to be optimized as a whole. And that means optimizing the overall system not optimizing the individual departments independently.

  continue reading: Marketing in a Lean Company
• Eliminating Complexity from Work

  as much as half of the activities of about sixty people had been to set up and take down jobs, expedite, move material, count material, and do other tasks that were unnecessary in the new process.

  Tim Fuller's article discusses how much inneficiency was removed from the process by adopting single piece flow in 1985.  How long did it take for management practice to understand this?  Certainly this understanding wasn't widespred in 2005.  I am not even sure it if it is widely understood and systems have been designed or redesigned with this knowledge in 2017.

  continue reading: Eliminating Complexity from Work
• Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

  Unfortunately we do not often stop to examine the theory and therefore fail to learn as we should as we experiment and get new results. The most effective way I know of to improve the learning is to use the PDSA cycle, predict the effects of change and then examining the results of change. As simple as those two acts are, they are skipped far to frequently.

  His second point, that managers frequently use overly simplistic models or theories is also important. Management is not well suited for simple theories that can be applied in any situation. Many interdependent variables are often at play and management requires not application of simple rules but applying knowledge in complex situations as best you can. Management is challenging and simple answers are often of little value – even though they are desired.

  continue reading: Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation
• Toyota Engineers a New Plant: the Living Kind

   

  Toyota’s vision:

  First, making things that benefit both people and the world as a whole.
  …
  Second, as a member of society, we must fulfill our responsibilities to all stakeholders. We must provide to customers cleaner, safer, and more attractive products with excellent value. To shareholders, we must enhance share value through long-term and stable growth by increasing profits and paying appropriate dividends. With business partners, we must engage in fair business based on a spirit of mutual benefit.

  To our employees, we must provide a workplace where they can work with pride based on mutual trust and responsibility between labor and management, and respect for people.

  continue reading: Toyota Engineers a New Plant: the Living Kind
• Malcolm Gladwell and Synchronicity

  Today I had lunch with a friend of mine, Sean Stickle, who continually provides me with interesting ideas to contemplate. One of the things he mentioned during lunch was a story in the New Yorker about the current college admission process.

  ...

  Obviously there are good things to learn from surveying and talking to your customers, but Deming understood that asking customers about what innovations they would like was dangerous.

  continue reading: Malcolm Gladwell and Synchronicity
• There is Much to Improve in How We Use the Internet to Serve Customers

  Webinars can have great interaction. They can provide very useful archived webinars covering some content (live webinars could be provided for free too if the reward was worth the cost) . If the public finds that free content valuable it can be about the most effective marketing in many ways including for gaining customers for live interactive webinars on more advanced topics.

  Webinars also allow the presenter to do multiple two hour sessions for different clients anywhere in the world in the same day. So you could customize your content to specific client needs. Also each of those sessions could include employees from multiple sites around the globe.

  continue reading: There is Much to Improve in How We Use the Internet to Serve Customers
• Seven Leadership Leverage Points

  IHI has the courage to say one of the 3 sources for there hypothesis as “Hunches, Intuition, and Collective Experience.” While attempting to base plans on data and not hunches is good. Often you must make decisions without data. It is why Dr. Deming was so concerned with mobility of top management: that mobility means many managers don’t really understand what they are managing. Lean thinkers understand the value of having managers with deep knowledge of the areas they manage.

  continue reading: Seven Leadership Leverage Points
• Lean Consumption: the Customer’s Perspective

  The concepts underlying lean consumption boil down to six simple principles that correspond closely with those of lean production.

  1. Solve the customer’s problem completely by making sure that all the goods and services work together to do so.
  2. Don’t waste the customer’s (or the provider’s) time.
  3. Provide exactly what the customer wants.
  4. ...

  continue reading: Lean Consumption: the Customer’s Perspective
• Box on Quality

  Dr. George Box is not as well known in the general management community as his ideas merit (in my biased opinion – photo of Bill Hunter and George Box). He is well know in the statistics field as one of the leading statistical minds. Box on Quality is an excellent book that gathers his essays from his 65th to 80th year.

  continue reading: Box on Quality
• The Quick Fix

  W. Edwards Deming

  One trouble with American industry today is that top management supposes that one lecture or one day will do it. “Come, spend a day with us, and do for us what you did for Japan, that we too may be saved.”

  continue reading: The Quick Fix
• Innovation in Organizations

  Innovation is one of the areas of management improvement that is not given sufficient attention.  Innovation is critical to the success of organizations and to the Deming management philosophy. Deming however, never had much specific advice on how to innovate. The management strategies he proposed do support innovation: truly knowing your customers, constancy of purpose, truly knowing your business, understanding your purpose, etc..

  continue reading: Innovation in Organizations
• Education Improvement

  Education is another area where applying management improvement concepts can be difficult. The Education area does require special care but management improvement concepts can work very well in Education.

  David Langford has done some great work in this area. He wrote a book, Orchestrating Learning With Quality, which while I would definitely recommend it for anyone planning on applying these concepts...

  continue reading: Education Improvement
• 30 Year Fixed Mortgage Rates and the Fed Funds Rate

  There is not a significant correlation between moves in federal funds rate and 30 year mortgage rates for those looking to lock in mortgage rates. For example, if 30 year rates are at 6% and the federal reserve drops the federal funds rate 50 basis points that tells you little about what the 30 year rate will do.

  continue reading: 30 Year Fixed Mortgage Rates and the Fed Funds Rate