Apr 27 2022
In his latest post on AllAboutLean, Christoph Roser compares the flow of materials in a factory with the flow of traffic on roads. About flow, he asks “But what is it?” but stops short of giving an answer. I also wrote many posts about flow without ever bothering to answer that question. It seemed so obvious and self-explanatory that it didn’t require defining but, perhaps, it does.
Mar 8 2022
The first I heard of the intriguing distinction between foxes and hedgehogs is in Woody Allen’s movie Husbands and Wives, in which Sally, played by Judy Davis, maniacally classifies the people in her life as foxes or hedgehogs.
We often use animal metaphors to categorize personalities, roles, or behaviors. Scrum has given us pigs, who are committed to a project, and chickens, who are merely involved. An individual may be foolishly riding a tiger, be someone else’s lapdog, or have a cat’s nine lives…
Was “the hedgehog and the fox” yet another unproven psychological theory? Sadly, yes. Modern psychologists have indeed built a theoretical house of cards on top of a poetic one-liner from 2700 years ago.
Feb 27 2020
Sam MacPherson started a discussion on LinkedIn about Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda’s 5 Precepts. Sakichi Toyoda died in 1930 and, 5 years later, Kiichiro and Risaburo Toyoda pulled together 5 precepts that he had lived to share with Toyota employees. Sam thinks that these 5 precepts are the key to understanding culture, global business practices, and company Hoshins.
Dec 27 2019
Among the dusty tomes Dan Markovitz accused me of hoarding in my office, I found eleven handbooks. They occupy two linear feet of shelf space, and I have a few more in electronic form. The print books have indeed been accumulating dust because they are no longer where I look for information.
For theories, the first stop is Wikipedia; for details on using a software tool, StackOverflow; for changing headlight bulbs in my car, YouTube… The last time I opened a handbook was to check a claim that it covered a particular topic. It didn’t.
Dec 8 2019
Until this year, I didn’t pay much attention to Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). During Christoph Roser’s van full of nerds tour of Industry 4.0 in Germany last July, I heard about PLCs everywhere and even visited the Siemens plant in Amberg that produces 31% of the world’s PLCs. It was a wake-up call.
Dec 30 2023
Greatest Hits of 2023
This blog’s greatest hits of 2023:
#greatesthitsof2023, #quality, #VSM, #ValueStreamMap, #deming, #toyota
Share this:
Like this:
By Michel Baudin • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: Deming, Greatest hits of 2023, Quality, Toyota, Value Stream Map, VSM