Long Lead Times: The Root of All Evil
I came across this white paper of sorts from an outfit called ARC describing something they call “reverse logistics”. The complexity of the logistics process they describe is mind-numbing and I...
View ArticleThe Essential Manufacturing Leadership Reading List
If you bounce onto the pages on Accounting & Finance, Culture & Leadership, Execution Tools, Strategy and Supply Chain you will find a couple of books listed on each page that collectively make...
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The Foghorn Leghorn Principle of Design
There are lots of statistical principles that apply to manufacturing but I can think of none more powerful and directly on point than the words of that font of wisdom, Foghorn Leghorn, when he said,...
View ArticleYou Can’t Ignore Tooling
Strikingly absent in manufacturing management advice and literature is an acknowledgement of the huge importance of tooling. I suspect that is because the economics of tooling don’t fit the theories; r...
View ArticleThe Death of Core Competence Thinking
C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel wrote The Core Competence of the Corporation in the Harvard Business Review back in 1990 and it has been the rationale for outsourcing ever since. The logic behind it is...
View ArticleOver-Reliance on Technology
One of the major news sites reported yesterday on the cause of the fire that crippled the cruise ship off the coast of Mexico, speculating that a fuel leak came in contact with a “pile-on” light. I’m...
View ArticleLearn How Kanban Systems are Used in a Lean Manufacturing Environment
Learn what Kanban Cards and Kanban Systems are and how they can be used in a manufacturing environment
View ArticleEliminating Waste – After the Product Leaves the Factory
Some mergers are about synergy and vertical integration, while others are to consolidate dying, wasteful business models and prolong the inevitable demise of the companies doing the merging. The...
View ArticleSupply Chain Segmentation? Bureaucracy Heavy Value Streams
The latest supply chain buzzword seems to be “segmentation”. The basic idea is directly aligned with lean thinking – “…different customers associated with different channels and different products are...
View ArticleThe World is A’Changin’
There is a very good article in the New York Times (good because it echoes something I have been saying for some time) about cutting out the middlemen. “When the founders of a start-up that sells...
View ArticleLeaving Japan Behind
Rahul Garga wrote a piece concerning the Japanese economy in Seeking Alpha the other day called “Why Japan Might Find it Hard To Ease Out of This One”. Among his points were: “Japan once held a major...
View ArticleEngineering Flow
A CEO who was perennially frustrated with excessive inventories and lack of success with annual pushes to improve turns plotted the data over the last twenty years on a time line and marked when they...
View ArticleThe Ideal Manufacturing System and My Hypocracy
The post I put up last week slamming Big Data and ERP brought on spate of feedback that generally followed two lines of questions/criticism: (1) You constantly slam big systems but don’t offer an...
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Eco-Self Deception
This is the Massive McMuffin – bacon and sausage, egg, cheese … the works. Start the day off with one of these and you’re better than halfway to your daily fat intake before you even get out of the...
View ArticleThe Transformation of Fast Fashion From Genius to Abomination
More Americans died in the Civil War than is all wars we have fought in – combined. While the majority of the Civil War deaths were due to disease, the actual battle mortality was carnage an a scale...
View ArticleLive by the Forecast – Die by the Forecast
Bloomberg has been the source of stories about Walmart’s inability to keep stock on the shelves lately. The most recent is about a pretty goofy process of external audits, green dots, and flipping...
View ArticleReal Lean versus Faux Lean
Just to make a couple of things clear … Lean & Headcount Having fewer people doesn’t make a company lean. It just means they have fewer people. Period. Statements like, “Thanks to the increasing...
View ArticleYou Can Make Book On It
One of the many great lines in Charlie Wilson’s War came when Julia Roberts’ character, Joanne Herring asked, “Why is Congress always saying one thing and doing nothing?”, to which Charlie Wilson...
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Charging Extra for Waste
A consulting outfit helped the folks at the University of Virginia shorten the cycle time of the document editing process for such things as case studies and other teaching materials. The article in...
View ArticleSpeed is Free
A BusinessWeek article suggests that FedEx and UPS have a dilemma – sometimes the box doesn’t have to be there overnight. I think they have a bigger problem – the box should never take a week. I...
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