Blog posts on lean manufacturing

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

• Origins of the Toyota Production System

  Our focus should be on improving our understanding of management.  It seems to me the discussion has been beneficial thus far.  I would also admit that this is probably of interest to a small sub set of those interested in lean manufacturing.  That is fine.  I do believe there is no benefit for discussions to degrade into negative attacks but when the discussion is mainly sharing views, information and ways of looking at the historical record I find it can be very interesting.

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• Reducing Waste - Zero Waste to Landfill

  A great improvement strategy. Determine what you are trying to do. Understand the system. Set up process measures that measure that system. Improve the system and track the results. Repeat. Maintain focus over the long term. Result: success.

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• How Toyota Management Develops a New Camry

  The importance taking what you learn to improve the system has been stressed for quite some time but still so often it is not done. The difference between inspecting to fix the product before you ship it and inspecting to improve your system is huge.

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• Going lean Brings Long-term Payoffs

  The early successes provide resources to invest in making large more fundamental changes to the organization. Those successes also help convince people these lean ideas have merit. Dilbert does a good job of illustrating how many workers feel about the latest words spoken by their management. Without visible success expecting employees to believe the new management practices is unwise.

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• Lean is Harmony

  The tools are useful, but they are not the end. Just using the tools can help move an organization to the point where they are ready to truly examine how to improve. Most often the attempts (just like previous attempts with quality management, six sigma… did) stop short of more than superficial change where a few new tools are used in the same old system. 

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• Lean is Harmony

  The tools are useful, but they are not the end. Just using the tools can help move an organization to the point where they are ready to truly examine how to improve. Most often the attempts (just like previous attempts with quality management, six sigma… did) stop short of more than superficial change where a few new tools are used in the same old system. 

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• The Triumph of Lean Production

  ... Just think about that Toyota’s Georgetown plant (seen by many as one of the best examples of lean manufacturing) stops the line 2,000 a week. Do you think your organizations systems are as well designed as the Georgetown plant? Does your organization stop to examine what needs to be improved with anything approaching that level...

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• Toyota, Lean and Management Consultants

  ...Serious attempts will also be frustrating at times and can also fail but most organizations won’t even commit to attempting serious change. Most will just look for some items from current fads to dress up how they have always managed.

  That management consultants will also jump from fad to fad, without conviction, is not news. Deming called them “hacks” in the 1980’s. Bob Sutton’s excellent article calls 90% of management advice crap...

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• The Management System is the Key

  I think too often people (in relation to management ideas) demand that things be made more simple than is possible to adequately understand the systems involved. This of course leads to problems. A huge value provided by people like Russell Ackoff is their ability to help explain what is needed in fairly simple terms. Still understanding how these ideas are being expressed in our management systems and how to apply the concepts to our management systems is still a challenge.

  ...

  I think one of the big differences between the best lean efforts and the others is the increased value placed on deeper understanding and thinking systemically.

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• Business 901 Podcast with Me: Deming’s Management Ideas Today

  Here are some links related to items I mention in the podcast:

  • The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog
  • William Hunter, my father. Link to paper with Easaw Chacko on Building a Quality Movement within a developing nation, 1972. Developing Children’s Numeracy Using Dice
  • Shoichiro Toyoda, Honorary Chairman and director of Toyota: “There is not a day I don’t think about what Dr. Deming meant to us. Deming is the core of our management.”
  • Statistics for Experimenters by George Box, Bill Hunter and Stu Hunter.
  • City of Madison applying Deming’s management ideas...

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• Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno

  Ohno focused a great deal on the faulty perceptions derived from cost accounting thinking. He discussed the importance of not letting your understanding be clouded by thinking with the accounting mindset.

  If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses.

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• Toyota Special Report: Thinking Production System

  This short article is peppered with many great quotes as section headers:

  • In TPS, the T also stands for Thinking
  • To cut lead-time, cut out all the bits that don't add value.
  • The line must stop if there is a problem.
  • Ask yourself Why? five times.
  • Develop people who can come up with unique ideas.

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• Toyota Execution Not Close to Being Copied

  A company truly driven by a focus on continual improvement, respect for all employees and reasonable executive compensation might be a company serious about adopting Deming and Toyota management principles. It is hard for me to imagine such a situation that doesn’t truly seek, as the primary aim of the organization, to benefit many stakeholders (workers, owners, suppliers, customers…) not just executives (or just executives, board and owners…).

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• Toyota Understands Robots are Best Used to Enhance the Value Employees Provide

  Toyota has always seen robotics as a way to enhance what staff can do. Many USA executives think of robotics as a way to reduce personnel. Toyota wants to use the brainpower of employees to continually improve the organization. Toyota wants to free people for monotonous or dangerous work to let them use their minds.

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