Superfactory Newsletter - September2009

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Volume 10 Issue 9 | September 2009 | www.superfactory.com

From the Editor

Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter!

Now is the time to invest in lean improvements. Check out Gemba Academy, which has just added a new course on Quick Changeover, as well as a series of Lean Thinker Interviews and Lean Leader Interviews. The Seven Wastes course is also now available with Spanish subtitles.

The Superfactory LinkedIn group has over 3,000 members. If you're a member of LinkedIn, or are interested injoining the largest professional social networking group, also join theSuperfactory Group.

You can also follow us on Twitter to stay informed of new content and lean manufacturing news.

- Kevin Meyer

Manufacturing Excellence News

Stories of interest to the lean community.

Toyota To Shutter Only California Plant
Forbes - Hana R. Alberts - ‎Aug 27, 2009‎‎
Applying Lean Principles to Customer Satisfaction Measurement
Circuits Assembly - Tony Bellitto - ‎Aug 19, 2009‎
Watlow Electric Finds Value in Lean Accounting
IndustryWeek - Jonathan Katz - ‎Aug 20, 2009‎‎
BMW puts big bet on future here
Greenville News - Jenny Munro - ‎Aug 22, 2009‎
The Poppendiecks Speak: Two-Pizza Teams and the Software ...
informIT - Mary Poppendieck, Matthew Heusser - ‎Aug 24, 2009‎
Chariot Carriers Improving Efficiency
Bicycle Retailer - ‎Aug 25, 2009‎
Streamlining at St. Joseph Medical Center
Daily Record (subscription) - Danielle Ulman - ‎Aug 25, 2009‎
Survey: Lean and safety remain important to manufacturers
Reliable Plant Magazine - ‎Aug 26, 2009‎
Safety moves off back burner
The News-Press - Laura Ruane - ‎Aug 26, 2009‎
Government launches manufacturing plan
Freshinfo - ‎Aug 28, 2009‎‎
Upgrading in a down economy
Longmont Daily Times-Call - Tony Kindelspire - ‎18 hours ago‎‎

In the Evolving Excellence Blog

Join over 5,000 readers who get their daily dose of blunt manufacturing and business reality by subscribing to the Evolving Excellence blog!

| Subscribe to Evolving Excellence by Email

Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:

Bashing Suppliers Into Submission - Even with the failure of GM and Chrysler, some companies are still using those worn out supplier management methods. Also: watch this great video showing how silly deferred terms are.
Whirlpool Evansville Dies the Expected but Unnecessary Death - We've been predicting it for years, unfortunately. Traditional accounting at its worst.
All Costs Are Not Created Equal - Most cost reduction programs focus purely on labor and material... ignoring many of the larger real costs.
Show Me the Metrics - Productivity is not a good metric for manufacturing.
NCR Retreats From Outsourcing - One by one companies are realizing the errors of their outsourcing ways.
But You Can't Fool All the People All the Time - Proctor & Gamble is trying to "grow"... instead of being profitable and sustainable.
What's the Italian Word for Insane? - Fiat is doing its best to drive the remnants of Chrysler into the ground.
The Supervisor Transformed - The new role of the "lean supervisor."
Leading in the Gemba - Forget managers versus leaders - just go to the gemba.
Fun With Statistics - Veneer of Verisimilitude Edition - Significant figures trip up the EPA and Cash for Clunkers program.

Visit the Evolving Excellence blog...

Upcoming Events

09/15/2009	Setup Reduction TPM Blitz - San Antonio, TX - AME
09/15/2009	Training Within Industry - JI - Bakersfield, CA - AME
09/15/2009	Setup Reduction and TPM Blitz - San Antonio, TX - AME
09/15/2009	Green 101 - Burlington, ON - AME
09/16/2009	Lean Service - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
09/16/2009	Change Agent Skills - Cambridge, MA - LEI
09/16/2009	MES Multi-Country Rollouts - Webinar - WTG
09/17/2009	Lean Tools for the Office - Morris Plains, NJ - NJ MEP
09/21/2009	Accelerating Cost Reductions - Pasadena, CA - Caltech
09/21/2009	Process Excellence for Service - Chicago, IL - IQPC
09/21/2009	Lean Experience - Novi, MI - Lean Learning Center
09/22/2009	PLM Road Map 2009 - Detroit, MI - CPD Associates
09/22/2009	Human Error Prevention - Chattanooga, TN - High Tech Seminars
09/22/2009	Thinking About Manufacturing Excellence - Athens, GA - AME
09/23/2009	How to Lay Out a Warehouse or Distribution Center - San Diego, CA - U-Kansas
09/24/2009	Principles of Lean Manufacturing - Morris Plains, NJ - NJ MEP
09/24/2009	Root Cause Analysis - Chattanooga, TN - High Tech Seminars
09/24/2009	Lean Supervisor - Hamilton, ON - EMC
09/26/2009	Operational Excellence Conference - St. Louis, MO - IIE
09/28/2009	Six Sigma Executive Champion - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
09/28/2009	Nuclear Quality Requirements for Procurement - Chattanooga, TN - High Tech Seminars
09/28/2009	QEH&S Auditing - ISO 19000 - Chattanooga, TN - High Tech Seminars
09/28/2009	Lean to Green Manufacturing - Austin, TX - SME
09/28/2009	Factory Physics: The Science of Lean Manufacturing - Ann Arbor, MI - U-Michigan
09/28/2009	Lean Kaizen Boot Camp - Novi, MI - Lean Learning Center
09/28/2009	5S for the Office - Hamilton, ON - EMC
09/29/2009	Getting the Right Things Done - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
09/29/2009	Value Stream Mapping for the Office and Service - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
09/29/2009	Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
09/29/2009	5S for the Office - London, ON - EMC
09/29/2009	Strategies for Lean Purchasing - Hamilton, ON - EMC
09/30/2009	Global Supply Chain Management - Ann Arbor, MI - U-Michigan
09/30/2009	How to Perform a 5S Event - Webinar - 5S Supply
09/30/2009	Managing to Learn: The Use of the A3 - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
09/30/2009	Value Stream Mapping for the Office - Brockville, ON - EMC
09/30/2009	Dyna-Flo Plant Tour - Edmonton, AB - AME
10/01/2009	Optimizing Flow in Office and Service - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
10/01/2009	Value Stream Mapping for Healthcare - Philadelphia, PA - LEI
10/01/2009	Value Stream Mapping - Chatham, ON - EMC
10/01/2009	Creating a Lean Culture - Beaverton, OR - AME
10/01/2009	Root Cause Analysis & Lean - Brooklyn Park, MN - AME
10/01/2009	Northern Arizona Lean Conference - Flagstaff, AZ - AME
10/05/2009	5S Workshop - Belleville, ON - EMC
10/05/2009	Total Productive Maintenance - Belleville, ON - EMC
10/06/2009	Professional Development for Womean - Norfolk, VA - Clemson
10/06/2009	Developing Pull Systems & Kanban - Guelph, ON - EMC
10/06/2009	Visual Management - Guelph, ON - EMC
10/06/2009	Financial Applications for non-Financial Managers - Arnprior, ON - EMC
10/07/2009	Northeast Shingo Prize Conference - Worcester, MA - GBMP
10/07/2009	Lean Equipment Management I - TPM - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
10/07/2009	Lean Accounting - Hamilton, ON - EMC
10/08/2009	Lean Accounting - London, ON - EMC
10/08/2009	6S and Visual Management for Standard Work - Colton, CA - AME
10/09/2009	Lean Equipment Management II - Advanced Reliability - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
10/09/2009	Flexible New Product Development - Boston, MA - GBMP
10/12/2009	Six Sigma Black Belt - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
10/12/2009	Lean Certification - Mason, OH - Definity
10/12/2009	European Manufacturing Strategies 2009 - Dusseldorf, Germany - EMS
10/13/2009	Working Effectively with Japanese: Cross-Cultural Seminar - Detroit, MI - Japan Intercultural
10/13/2009	Lean Product Development Conference - Schaumburg, IL - SME
10/13/2009	Strategies for Lean Purchasing - London, ON - EMC
10/14/2009	Developing Pull Systems & Kanban - Belleville, ON - EMC
10/14/2009	Visual Management - Belleville, ON - EMC
10/15/2009	Principles of Lean Manufacturing - Morris Plains, NJ - NJ MEP
10/15/2009	SMART Leadership - Mason, OH - Definity
10/15/2009	Effective Problem Solving - Hamilton, ON - EMC
10/19/2009	AME Annual Conference - Covington, KY - AME
10/19/2009	Professional Development for Women - Philadelphia, PA - Clemson
10/20/2009	Lean for CFOs and Controllers - Boston, MA - LEI
10/20/2009	Financial Applications for non-Financial Managers - Kitchener, ON - EMC
10/21/2009	PLC Training Workshop - Atlanta, GA - Business Industrial Network
10/21/2009	5S Workshop - Chatham, ON - EMC
10/21/2009	Total Productive Maintenance - Chatham, ON - EMC
10/22/2009	Lean Tools for the Office - Morris Plains, NJ - NJ MEP
10/22/2009	15th Annual Manufacturing in Mexico Summit - Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico - Offshore Group
10/22/2009	Lean Simulation - Cincinnati, OH - Definity
10/22/2009	Senior Lean Deployment Leader Seminar - Cambridge, MA - LEI
10/22/2009	5S Workshop - Hamilton, ON - EMC
10/22/2009	Total Productive Maintenance - Hamilton, ON - EMC
10/23/2009	Value Stream Mapping for the Office - London, ON - EMC
10/26/2009	Metrics for a Lean Enterprise - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
10/26/2009	Controllogix, RSLogix 5000 Workshop - Atlanta, GA - Business Industrial Network
10/26/2009	Value Stream Mapping - Arnprior, ON - EMC
10/27/2009	Matching Accounting to your Lean Environment - Dayton, OH - U-Dayton
10/27/2009	5S Visual Workplace - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Developing Kaizen Skills - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Making Materials Flow - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Value Stream Mapping for Manufacturing - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Value Stream Mapping for Office and Service - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Senior Executive Lean Seminar - Deerfield, IL - LEI
10/27/2009	Strategies for Lean Purchasing - Kingston, ON - EMC
10/28/2009	How to Deploy 5S Throughout Your Facility - Webinar - 5S Supply
10/28/2009	Key Concepts of Lean - Understanding TPS - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/28/2009	Lean Supply Stream - Rethinking Supply Chain - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/28/2009	Lean Warehousing and Distribution - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/28/2009	Optimizing Flow in Office and Service - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/28/2009	Standardized Work: The Foundation for Kaizen - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/28/2009	Value Stream Mapping - Hamilton, ON - EMC
10/29/2009	Principles of Lean Food Production - Morris Plains, NJ - NJ MEP
10/29/2009	Lean Problem Solving - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/29/2009	Made to Order Lean: Excelling in High Mix Low Volume - Chicago, IL - LEI
10/29/2009	Lean Accounting - Brockville, ON - EMC
10/30/2009	5S for the Office - Kitchener, ON - EMC

View the full events calendar...

Featured Book

The Birth of Lean The Lean Manager

By Freddy Ballé and Michael Ballé

In this groundbreaking sequel to The Gold Mine, authors Freddy Ballé and Michael Ballé present a compelling story that teaches readers the most important lean lesson of all: how to transform themselves and their workers through the discipline of learning the lean system.

The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation reveals how individuals can go beyond the short-term gains from tools, and realize a deeper, sustainable path of improvement. Full of human moments that capture the excitement and drama of lean implementation, as well as clear explanations of how tools and systems go hand-in-hand, this book will teach and inspire every person working to make lean a reality in their organization today.

More information - Previous featured books

Featured Article

Toyota's Dénouement

By Bob Emiliani, The CLBM Inc.

A combination of self-inflicted wounds more than a decade in the making plus a global economic crisis shows us that Toyota Motor Corporation has lost its way. While not completely unexpected, it is still surprising that Toyota could lose its grasp on key fundamentals of its management system. The company’s problems and efforts to recover offer many high-value lessons for any manager who is willing to learn.

For those who study and practice Lean management, Toyota Motor Corporation has always been our guiding star, our true north. But what happens when Toyota turns east, or even south, as they have slowly done over the last decade or so?

Toyota has always been the principal Lean practitioner to learn from because they have done such a brilliant job of putting together a wonderful management system based on work done by other people [1] and through the addition of many of their own unique contributions [2] and steady maintenance and improvement. Their non-zero-sum, principle-based, human-centered management system is undoubtedly the best that has been created in modern times. Its practice should be the norm in any organization, not the exception.

Toyota’s recent problems originated with Toyota Global Vision 2010 (launched in 2002 and running through 2010), which, among other things, stated an objective to grow and obtain 15% global market share by the early 2010s. This required Toyota to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 7% per year for a decade (staring from a large base). The owners of this plan and the prior one, Toyota 2003 Vision (launched in 1996 and running through 2005), are the past president and chairman of Toyota, Hiroshi Okuda; the past president and current chairman, Fujio Cho; and the past president and current vice chairman, Katsuaki Watanabe.

Read the entire article...

Featured Evolving Excellence Blog Post

What's the Italian Word for Insane?
by Bill Waddell

The new owners of Chrysler have had a busy week. Many folks may not know that they have cobbled together a couple of great old brands in the farm and construction machinery business - Case and New Holland - and formed a company called CNH that is second to Deere in terms of sales. They are slowly running it into the ground by focusing way too much on equipment financing and not nearly enough on equipment value. It is losing money (due to the economy they say, although Deere is making money in the same economy) and owes its parents at Fiat $5 billion. Fiat had this diseased elephant go out and borrow a billion so it could pay back some of the loans because Fiat needs the dough to pay for its Chrysler deal.

Over at Chrysler, it is worthwhile to see what the Italians plan to do with the billion bucks they squeezed out of the tractor folks. To be fair the last three owners of Chrysler (Cereberus Capital, Daimler and Chrysler itself) did their level best to run it into the ground, however the government rightfully dumped those losses on the lenders and investors who backed them, and virtually handed Chrysler's few remaining 'good assets' to Fiat on a platter. Now it is Fiat's turn to se if they can finish the job and kill Chrysler for good - and this week they got off to a rip-roaring start.

For starters, "Chrysler Group LLC said Wednesday that it is dropping its lifetime powertrain warranty in favor of a 5-year, 100,000-mile guarantee. Rick Deneau said the decision was driven by market research that showed consumers prefer warranties with a fixed time period. Powertrain warranties typically cover repair or replacement of transmission and engine parts." That market research must have been conducted in a college bar, very late on a Friday night, in between rounds of the beer pong tournament. The boys in Turin should be told, however, that market research notwithstanding and while folks may feel differently in Italy no sane, sober American 'prefers warranties with fixed time periods over lifetime warranties'. More important, announcing to your customer base that the new owners do not intend to make cars that will run as long as those made by the management that went bankrupt is not particularly smart.

The warranty deal and shuffling money from the tractor company to Turin to Chrysler doesn't really matter compared to the next bit of news. Jim Press is out and the new Chrysler is in the hands of a financier and lawyer. Jim Press, as you know, was the guy from Toyota brought over by Cereberus to fix things shortly before the bankruptcy. Apparently his failure to work miracles in two years while working for the Bob Nardelli of GE and Home Depot infamy, under the control of Cereberus whose vision for Chrysler was to make a ton of money from Chrysler Financial and GMAC was not good enough for the Italians. They want Sergio Marchionne to run the show.

Jim Press worked for Toyota for 37 years, was the first non-Japanese President of Toyota USA, led their sales, engineering and manufacturing operations, and was critical to their success from their entry into the US market in 1970 to their passing of GM. The Italians don't want a guy like that to run the show. To them, apparently, knowledge of automobiles and knowledge of the American market is not terribly important.

Instead, they want Marchionne with all of five years in automotive, all of it in puny Fiat, and none of it in the USA. His claim to the throne is that he 'turned Fiat around' - a euphemism for chopping heads and stopping the flow of blood. He has grown nothing.

Loot the tractor company, cut the warranties, and can the Toyota guy in favor of a lawyer - some board of directors you guys got going for you over there at Fiat. Good luck in the American automotive market.

Read the rest and comment (6 comments so far)...