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This time of the year brings us two of the best lean manufacturing conferences of the year.

In late September we had the Lean Accounting Summit in Orlando. The Summit was a huge success, and it was announced that the 2008 Summit will be in Las Vegas in mid September. Then later this month we have the AME Annual Conference in Chicago, the largest lean manufacturing conference in the world. I will be at both events, and hope to see you there!

As always we appreciate your support for our mission to spread manufacturing excellence knowledge. Click here for more information on sponsorships.

- Kevin Meyer

• Align Finance with Lean Manufacturing: 9 Actionable Items
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• Lear Corporation's Lean Manufacturing System Hikes Productivity
  CNNMoney.com - Oct 3, 2007
  
• Ready for Take-off
  Irish Independent, Ireland - Sep 27, 2007
  
• India should focus on quality not quantity
  US-PharmaTechnologist.com, UK - Sep 26, 2007
  
• Toyota and Total Productive Maintenance
  Reliable Plant Magazine, OK - Sep 24, 2007
  
• Family firm gives workers a say
  Chicago Tribune, United States - Sep 24, 2007
  
• US Manufacturers Taking Lean and Green to Heart, Census Finds
  GreenBiz, DC - Sep 23, 2007
  
• Six Sigma, lean strategy go hand in hand
  Reliable Plant Magazine, OK - Sep 14, 2007
  
• A Tough Lesson From An Unusual Source
  Product Design & Development, NJ - Sep 19, 2007
  
• Hudson to Hawaii
  Worcester Telegram, MA - Sep 26, 2007
  
• Winning Strategies for Global Manufacturers
  Machinist.in, India - Sep 29, 2007
  
• Company tidies its image in garbage truck business
  DesMoinesRegister.com, IA - Oct 5, 2007
  

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Visit the Superfactory Events Calendar for the full list of events.

  Supply Chain Excellence
  by Peter Bolstorff

The first resource available presenting the unique Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model developed by the Supply Chain Council, the original edition provided readers with an unparalleled guide for implementing best practices in supply chain management. Now thoroughly updated and expanded to include the DCOR and CCOR frameworks. The book includes sample deliverables, tasks, executive behaviors, and diagrams.

More Information

Plug Power - A Work Culture to Accelerate Innovation
by Robert Hall, Association for Manufacturing Excellence

Plug Power is a company with big possibilities. Their website reveals this by having two major divisions of content, "Plug Is" and "Plug Will." The company began in 1997 mostly doing research on hydrogen fuel cells, and it still has the feel of a campus. But in 2001, the company began growing in size, aiming for a major role commercializing stationary power generation using hydrogen-powered fuel cells.

The company has competitors with the same ambition; three of them are Hydrogenics, Idatech, and ReliOn. However, because Plug Power started from a formidable research and technology base, it retains a strong technical staff. That's why many investors have bet on Plug Power as the most likely to pull off commercial breakthroughs. It is pointing toward becoming a major producer in one segment of the stationary electrical generator market: cell phone base stations. However, organizational growth preparing for this presented its own set of problems.

As more people came on board, the organization became too big to operate informally, and new people entering came from different prior work experiences. This resulted in a cultural amalgam. Plug needed systemic procedures, but traditional command-and-control could not achieve the collaboration necessary in a fastchanging technical environment. Besides a structure to hang it on, they needed a common culture — a common language and common behaviors that would enable people to come to agreement on tough decisions. Otherwise, a group of very talented people could not concentrate their potential on the stretch goals necessary to commercialize fuel cell generators.

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Grinstein's Lesson

The airline industry has been in a world of hurt the last several years, basically since 9/11. Terrorism, high fuel prices, global competition, and a topsy-turvy market have made airline management jobs the territory of the egocentric, gutsy, or just plain stupid. Most of the managers... after the next few paragraphs you'll understand why I don't call them leaders... have pulled their airlines out of chapter 11 by bashing unions into submission while removing pillows from flights. Not exactly the best way to engender employee support and customer appreciation.

It didn't have to be that way, and Gerald Grinstein, who just retired as Delta's CEO, shows us how to turnaround the most difficult of situations by leading, not managing.

Gerald Grinstein managed to cut Delta's costs deeply while winning unusual loyalty from the company's largely non-union workforce. A typical gesture for the grandfatherly 75-year-old: Late one night last year, he scrubbed carpets and seats of a 767, joining other senior executives and 400 front-line employees who volunteered to deep-clean planes for no pay.

Going to the gemba. Delta's employees knew they had a different kind of CEO on their hands from day one.

One of Mr. Grinstein's first acts as CEO was to go where few Delta executives had ventured: He strolled from his office, across Delta's sprawling campus of low-slung red brick buildings near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, to eat lunch in the cafeteria. "You could see he was trying to break down this us-and-them type of barrier," said then chief operating office Jim Whitehurst.

He knew that a successful organization must respect people and treat them right. There would be hard decisions ahead, but being open and honest would pay dividends. And it did. He eventually won more concessions from his pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics than he had even asked for.

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