About Michel Baudin

Consultant, trainer, author on Lean Manufacturing

Posts by Michel Baudin:

Jun 18 2016

The Truth About Kanban | Bill Waddell

Bill Waddell, intellectual sparring partner for almost 20 years now, has put out this video revealing “The Truth About Kanban”:

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

This video is just Bill’s talking head against the background of a brick fireplace with a few books on top, notably “Toyota Kata.” It contains no moving pictures of Kanbans in action and all you learn from viewing is in Bill’s words, and I have a few quibbles with these words.

I usually get impatient with this kind of video, because voice is a slow medium, and you would get the same information five times faster reading the transcript. But I have never met Bill in the flesh, and I was curious to hear his voice. It’s a good radio voice, albeit curmudgeonly, reminiscent of a younger Tommy Lee Jones.

Now, about the content, Bill makes three main points:

  1. What you use for a pull signal doesn’t matter.
  2. You can use Kanbans with long lead time items.
  3. The Kanban system is a mechanism to drive improvement.

I agree with Point 3, but find Points 1 and 2 problematic.

Continue reading…

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Jun 12 2016

Project Manager Versus Chief Engineer: What’s The Difference?

Question put to Michael Ballé in his Gemba Coach column:

Management wants us to start lean in product development, but refuses to consider the difference in roles between our current project manager and a chief engineer – how important is that?

Project Manager and Chief Engineer are job titles covering different roles in different organizations. Before commenting on whether management in the questioner’s company should switch titles, we should know how they select their project managers, how much authority the project managers have, and what they are accountable for. Some companies do an outstanding job of product development under project managers; others don’t.

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By • Management • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Jun 9 2016

The Tesla Way vs. The Toyota Way | M. Donovan & J. P. Womack | The Lean Post

Elon Musk Tesla

“Given the ever-increasing barriers to entry in what Peter Drucker famously called the “industry of industries,” it’s a wonder that any automotive startups defy the long arc of consolidation by establishing themselves as viable competitors. And it’s even more notable when these newcomers present a model that just might challenge the incumbents to the core. Lean thinker Mark Donovan recently asked LEI founder Jim Womack whether the path taken by Tesla founder Elon Musk points to a new machine that can change the world. ”

Sourced from The Lean Post

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Are the barriers to entry into the auto industry “ever-increasing,” as asserted in the 2010 HBR article linked to above, or did this article get it wrong? Could it be that the barriers are actually falling, with advances in electronics and information technology leveling the field between incumbents and new entrants?

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Jun 8 2016

This Doctor is Upset, But It Doesn’t Really Sound Like Lean | Mark Graban | leanblog.org

Emergency Medicine News

“[…] it’s a first-hand story and an opinion piece. […]  Dr. Cotton describes the poor treatment he’s received from a 40-something internal “Lean consultant” named Dean. […] Dr. Cotton describes a typically hectic E.D. scene where he’s “six patients behind” and he’s spent some time talking to a patient’s mom in an attempt to comfort her and explain the situation… a perfectly human and caring response. Then, Dr. Cotton describes an interaction that I’d hope would never happen[…]: ‘And that’s when Dean confronted me. ‘He wasn’t your patient! You are six patients behind!” Dean was the hospital’s MBA consultant for LEAN management.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from:www.leanblog.org – Today, 9:12 AM

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

I think what happened to Dr. Cotton is primarily the result of 25 years of Lean bandwagon jumping. Ever since the name was coined, all sorts of consultants and gurus have rebranded their offerings as “Lean,” misleading their audiences and living off the reputation of the Toyota Production System.

Given the absence of consensus on a Lean body of knowledge or control on the appellation, this was inevitable. But this process has besmirched the “Lean” label, and I am not sure it is salvageable.

Dr. Cotton seems to have it in for MBAs, which Mark may think unfair because he has one. Mark’s saving grace, however, is that he is also a mechanical engineer.

See on Scoop it

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Jun 4 2016

Managing Complexities and Challenges of IIoT | Mary McDonald | Industry Week

Cable maze

“[…]When it comes to the manufacturing industry specifically, IoT is poised to make a tectonic shift in the industry. As manufacturing remains one of the larger economic drivers across the globe, one can anticipate that IoT is set to disrupt this important, interconnected global market.”

Sourced through Industry Week

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

In Manufacturing it is, perhaps, fitting that disruption by a largely wireless technology should be heralded with a picture of a 1990s vintage maze of cables. This article is part of an Industry Week special report about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), with informercials from suppliers like Dell and Intel, and articles about applications in various settings, including the GE case I reviewed earlier this week. I take the authors’ word about what this technology can do. The question in my mind is what Manufacturing will do, given its past unwillingness or inability to take advantage of available technology.

#IoT, #IIoT

By • Press clippings • 1 • Tags: , , , ,

Jun 2 2016

Top And Bottom 10 Posts Of All Time

The beauty of blogging is receiving feedback from readers in days rather in the months or years it takes with journal articles or books, and this feedback in invariably surprising. Casual remarks about a topic you don’t think essential are hits, while in-depth discussions of topics you care deeply about are duds. Overall, the 753 posts and 7 pages of this blog have logged a total of 558,249 page views since its inception in October, 2011, and elicited 2,213 comments.

The most popular post is a comparison of multiple approaches to improvement in operations. It is not surprising. What is, on the other hand, is the first runner up, a technical discussion of safety stocks, and the means of setting their levels.

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