Jan 6 2020
Kei Abe, unsung Japanese genius | Hansjörg Wyss | Swiss Made
Swiss Made is a 2013 book by James Breiding and Gerhard Schwarz about the successes of Swiss companies. It came to my attention for a paragraph that celebrates the contributions of my mentor Kei Abe as a consultant to Synthes and its charismatic CEO Hansjörg Wyss. As I was with Kei Abe on several occasions at Synthes and witnessed his interactions with Wyss and with engineers, I can attest that the following quote from the book is true:
“Hansjörg Wyss consolidated and expanded the Swiss orthopedic industry, becoming in the process one of Switzerland’s most successful and wealthy entrepreneurs. Wyss’s career is a tale of conquering the US market and then managing to consolidate the Swiss orthopedic industry, gobbling up one competitor after another — while effectively remaining the controlling shareholder. […] In 2011, Wyss sold Synthes to Johnson & Johnson for $21.3B.
The unsung Japanese genius
[…]The unsung hero of the company was Kei Abe, […] who managed to come up with novel designs for three decades. According to Wyss, Abe helped Synthes by ‘constantly forcing change in manufacturing, bringing new ideas and concepts for machines, thus enabling us to be at the forefront of new technology and having the best margins in the device industry.’
Of the overall strategy, Wyss remarks that ‘competitors thought we were crazy, but this is what kept the company one step ahead and gave us 10% higher margins'”
The book’s authors are journalists and had embellished the story with untrue statements that I edited out. No, Kei Abe was not a professor and never claimed to have “established the Kanban system” at Toyota. He was an aeronautics engineer from Tokyo University who went to work as a motorcycle designer for Honda, later joined the JMA and started his own consulting group, Management & Technology Japan in 1984, where I joined him in 1987.
On my last visit to Synthes, in Switzerland and without Kei, I remember pointing to a machine in a cell and telling my host “This looks like Kei’s handy work.” He confirmed that it had indeed been based on his input.
#synthes, #keiabe, #hansjoergwyss, #leanmanufacturing
Jan 13 2020
New Year Lost and Found | John Shook | Planet Lean
“As many of us are wont to do, I reflected a bit over the holidays. As always, it wasn’t hard to find ample fodder on both sides of the hope vs despair ledger: we have so much cause for concern around us, but also plenty to rejoice about. […] This year’s reflection confirms what I’ve found over many years: when seeming to lose something of great value, if you look you can find that something new has come along to offer welcome and perhaps unexpected value.[…]
As a noteworthy attempt to shed light on the lean and digital muddle, I turn to Christoph Roser’s Industry 4.0 Discovery Bus Tour of Geeks. Christoph rented a bus and invited interested parties to join in a tour to try to figure out exactly what is all this noise about Industry 4.0. The Geeks visited 10 German factories that claim to be doing exemplary work, with Christoph blogging about the visits along the way. I encourage you to read the entire series of posts on his blog All About Lean.”
Source: Planet Lean
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
It’s wonderful to see LEI Chair John Shook recognize Christoph’s tour of Industry 4.0 as a highlight of 2019. The tour takes up half of his picture gallery. In his description, he got the essence right but a few details wrong. It wasn’t a “Bus Tour of Geeks” but a “Van Full of Nerds.”
It was a van because there were only 8 of us, and “nerds” at my insistence. Geeks are wannabee nerds and “nerds” was a more accurate description of Ralph Richter, Franck Vermet, Torbjørn Netland, Christoph Roser, Hironori Hibino, Kai Lorentzen, Mark Warren, and me.
We also visited 7 factories, not 10: Bosch (2 sites), ABB, Kärcher, Siemens, Trumpf, and Audi. In addition, we visited R&D labs, startups, and universities. Altogether, it was the most informative and densely packed tour I have ever been on or organized.
I agree with John Shook that Christoph’s posts about the tour are must-reads, as he covered every visit we made. I blogged about this trip in a complementary way, about tools and ideas that intrigued me rather than companies:
#lean, #lei, #planetlean, #allaboutlean, #johnshook, #industry40, #vanfullofnerds
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By Michel Baudin • Blog clippings • 0 • Tags: All About Lean, d, Lean, LEI, Planet Lean