The pursuit of concurrent improvement in all dimensions of manufacturing performance through projects involving both the production floor and support services.
May 26 2016
The following video was recorded yesterday:
http://lightwise.me/2016/05/25/lean-leadership-insights-a-critical-leadership-role-the-lean-plant-manager/
I will be presenting on this topic at the Summit on Lean Leadership in Charlotte, NC on June 22.
Nov 19 2015
Question seen in another blog:
I work as a deployment champion in a manufacturing company, but I don’t have the support of my managers because they don´t believe in the lean methodology. Which lean tools can be used to help them believe?
I have to assume you are not self-appointed. If you are “deployment champion” for Lean in a manufacturing company, it is because someone in gave you the job, presumably because he or she believed in Lean and in you at the right person to champion it. But don’t presume it, find out what the motivation is. If it is that the company must be “Lean-certified” in order to continue doing business with its biggest customer, chances are that the whole effort is window-dressing, and your own job in particular. If this is the case, you need to decide whether you want to play along.
On the other hand, if the person who gave you the job is the CEO, the company must improve its performance to survive, and the CEO is convinced that going Lean is the only feasible way to do it, then it is a real job and you have the backing of the one manager who matters most.
Oct 23 2015
As part of their upcoming 10th Lean Forum in Moscow on 11/16-20, our partners in Russia, OrgProm, are organizing a “Lean Propaganda Contest and Exhibition,” co-sponsored by the Russia Academy of National Economy and Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation (RANKHIGS).
This is the banner under which they announced it:
Sep 15 2015
Originally “the art of the general,” strategy is about which armies or fleets you deploy where and for what purpose. It goes hand in hand with tactics, which is the way each unit then engages the enemy. Always fond of military metaphors, business people have chosen to use the term”strategy” for their plans and decisions on products or services, markets, promotion methods, technology, organization, and financing. To Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter “the essence of [business] strategy is choosing what not to do.”
Feb 12 2015
“In the first six to 12 months, get the turkeys out. Don’t drag your feet.”
Source: www.industryweek.com
The problem with this approach is that, at the outset of Lean transformation, management doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s not the managers’ fault, but the skills of leading a Lean transformation in this particular organization have to be learned along the way.
More often than not, the author’s version of “addressing the issue early” means firing loyal employees for disagreeing with something you later realize was wrong. And the message it sends is not one of commitment but of a mixture of brutality, incompetence and disrespect.
Continue reading…
May 27 2016
Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops? | G. Distelhorst | HBR
Michel Baudin‘s comments:
In 2014, three academics from Oxford, Stanford and Brown researched the impact of Lean Manufacturing on working conditions in the Nike supply chain. The conclusions in the HBR article are less nuanced than in their original paper in Management Science, which concluded: “Using difference-in-differences estimates from a panel of over three hundred factories, we find that lean adoption was associated with a 15 percentage point reduction in noncompliance with labor standards that primarily reflect factory wage and work hour practices. However, we find a null effect on factory health and safety standards.”
Continue reading…
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By Michel Baudin • Press clippings • 2 • Tags: Lean, Lean manufacturing, Nike, Working conditions