Oct 11 2015

Which car industry executive is this about?

The following is a quote about a prominent car industry executive:

“The workers at the factory were not used to the boss being so hands-on. Their previous boss was a behind-the-scenes manager and had rarely shown his face on the floor. But he was almost always in their midst. This was a place where distance was part of the work environment and certain lines were just not crossed. He crossed them. The engineers in their clean white coats were offended when he climbed under their test cars and growled at them for not having figured out things he could see quite clearly. They had to get their hands dirty, he said, and stop all this standing around.”

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Oct 11 2015

Lean and Industry 4.0 – Opposites or Complements? | Wiegand’s Watch

This is a translation of Bodo Wiegand’s latest newsletter, about Lean in Germany, followed by my comments:

Lately, I was at a company where the CEO told me “Mr. Wiegand, Lean is over –  all the talk now is about Industry 4.0”. Well, I hadn’t  seen this coming. Then:

  1. Lean would have been just a passing fad like many management theories.
  2. This company would already be Lean, with all the processes to be designed without waste.

So if Industry 4.0 takes over from Lean, we can say goodbye to the philosophy of creating value without waste, because that’s what Lean is about: creating value without waste.

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Oct 9 2015

Interview video, in French

Last week, in Paris, Philip Marris invited me to attend his seminar on Critical Chain Project Management, which I found enlightening. At the end of the day, Christian Hohmann asked me to sit with him for an interview that he posted on the Marris Consulting youtube channel. Warning: it’s in French.

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Oct 7 2015

About Obeyas (“Big Rooms”)

“Obeya” (大部屋) is Japanese for “Big room.” The term has been getting attention lately in the Lean community as a solution for service operations or project teams and is even conflated by some with production teams’ daily meetings on the shop floor, which don’t take place in a room other than the production shop itself.

On the other hand, the idea of bringing together in one room all the stakeholders in an issue, problem, or project to communicate face to face, find solutions and make decisions is not exactly new. It’s called a meeting, and those who wish to sound “Lean” without changing anything can call their meeting rooms “obeya.” Those who wish to dig deeper, however, find a more specific — and useful — concept, if not a panacea.

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Oct 4 2015

Lean Human Resources Seminar In The Philippines

“…the first ever management seminar on how to eliminate wasteful activities in the HR function…”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: image-store.slidesharecdn.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

As Mike Hoseus put it at the Lean HR summit in Florida last May:

“The important question is not ‘what is Lean’s role in HR’ but ‘what is HR’s role in Lean.’ HR’s role in a Lean Transformation is critical and essential.  For a Lean Transformation to be successful and go beyond implementing tools, an organization must address Purpose, Process, People and Problem Solving.  HR’s role is critical in all 4, but especially Purpose, People and Problem Solving.”

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Sep 19 2015

Gemba, and Genchi-Genbutsu

Gemba, and Genchi-Genbutsu are commonly used terms in the Lean community, with many web pages and blog posts purportedly explaining what they mean. For example, the following confused and simplistic statement is what you find on Wikipedia:

Genchi Genbutsu (現地現物) means “go and see” and it is a key principle of the Toyota Production System. It suggests that in order to truly understand a situation one needs to go to gemba (現場) or, the ‘real place’ – where work is done.

What are we actually talking about? 

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