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The Superfactory Newsletter is published monthly to over 50,000 subscribers. Inside Superfactory About -
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Volume 10 Issue 11 | November 2009 | www.superfactory.com |
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From the Editor
Now is the time to invest in lean improvements. The Superfactory LinkedIn group has over 3,500 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 |
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Manufacturing Excellence NewsStories of interest to the lean community.
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In the Evolving Excellence BlogJoin over 5,000 readers who get their daily dose of blunt manufacturing and business reality by subscribing to the Evolving Excellence blog!
Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:
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Featured Book
By Robert "Doc" Hall Strategic leaders of private and public organizations in the 21st century are faced with unprecedented challenges. The principles and practices that helped them compete and grow in the past, no longer work. Many of the problems are beyond complicated. They are problems generated by interlinked systems that prevent us from clearly defining the root cause. Their resolution requires reflection on the assumptions of the past and counter intuitive thinking. Today, with Compression, Doc gives us a new perspective on the challenges of the 21st century. He gives strategic leaders a way to put their arms around the complex issues facing their companies, markets, and communities. |
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Featured Article
By Bob Emiliani, The CLBM, LLC Every Lean advocate is very enthusiastic about their work. But individual enthusiasm without extensive, high-level coordinated group activities to promote Lean management in policy circles will relegate Lean to a niche practice. We can do better than that. What’s in a name? In October 2007, the Lean Enterprise Institute held a celebration in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to commemorate its 10th anniversary. Jim Womack spoke at the beginning of the event and offered a wonderful retrospective of LEI’s beginnings, accomplishments, and future direction, which was to move beyond Lean tools and start to focus on Lean management (finally!). He also shared his regrets over the name “Lean,” saying that it was not a good name in hindsight but it is the name we have and should make the best of it. To me, he sounded nearly apologetic. While Jim’s honesty was admirable, he should not have expressed any regret over the name “Lean.” Why? The long-view of history tells us that no matter what you call progressive management, executives will resist it or misinterpret and misapply it. John Krafcik could have instead named Lean “Free Money, Free Love” and people would still find reasons to ignore or disparage it. This is not a simple name or branding problem; the challenge runs much deeper than that, as I shall soon explain. For over 100 years, different names have been given to new management systems and methods. These include: Scientific Management, Total Quality Management, Reengineering, etc. Their common intent is to introduce progressive management practices to businesses and organizations. They seek to move executives away from wasteful conventional management principles and practices to new ones, which, if understood and practiced correctly, would do less harm and lead to greater prosperity for all key stakeholders. But, as history has shown us time and time again, most managers resist efforts to adopt new business principles and reform long-established practices, or they misunderstand and incorrectly practice them. The Hollywood film titled “The Matrix” offers an interesting analogy [1]. The human character Neo (Thomas Anderson, played by Keanu Reeves) and his colleagues embark on a mission to improve the human condition. They represent a threat to the software in the machine-based system, which responds by unleashing agents (computer programs) and sentinels (machines) to disrupt or destroy Neo’s mission. Progressive management, or Neo-management (new management) [2], and the people that introduce it, are often similarly perceived as threats. To address these threats, some executives (agents) and mid-level managers (sentinels) will disrupt or destroy their mission to improve the human condition in business. As in the movie, agents and sentinels appear in overwhelming numbers to preserve their system. The people who respond to the threat of Neo-management are not bad people. They are simply defending what they know to be true; that which in their minds is settled. |
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Featured Evolving Excellence Blog Post
Circling the Wagons of Ignorance Just because the people you choose to surround yourself with agree with you does not mean you are right. I have stated before that great minds might think alike, but raving lunatics often see eye to eye with each other too. There is no shortage of evidence to support that statement. As many as ten minds wallowing adjacent to each other in the foulest part of the sewers of California thought alike and proceeded to gang rape a little girl over the weekend. That in itself proves that thinking alike is hardly proof of correctness, let alone greatness. The crux of the scientific method is to form a hypothesis and then go out and look for something that can disprove it. The scientists and logic folks would say that only when you have given it an honest effort to prove yourself wrong - your idea passes every experiment you can devise - no peer or expert can refute you - are you onto something. We are surrounded with examples of failure resulting from inbreeding - people and organizations that cloister themselves in order to assure that no one will ever disagree with them. Their theories do not undergo anything like the scientific method. They are like the three college kids in Connecticut who tied the doors to a few dorm rooms shut, then loaded the dorm microwaves with popcorn and set them to cook so long the smoke alarms would go off. Driving their buddies wild with panic when they found themselves trapped in what they thought was a burning building was the apparent goal. There is not much doubt that, had they run the plan past just about anyone who was at home, in bed, sober at 3 AM when the scheme was hatched, they would have heard a well reasoned contrary opinion to their brilliant idea. The failing media outlets Kevin wrote about are in trouble largely because they are out of touch with their customers, and they are out of touch because they have set their own thinking up as the gold standard and do not air or print anything that contradicts them. They no more want to hear contrary opinions than those college kids wanted to hear what their parents would have thought about their popcorn plan. So they continue on the same intellectual path - getting validation from each other and wholesale rejection from their customers outside the circle. Same goes for our egg-headed friends over at Harvard as they engage each other in another silly debate over the nuances of their silly theories concerning manufacturing, innovation and the flatness of the earth. They have a closed circle politely debating shades of agreement, but they are not the least bit interested in having anyone from outside the club refute their theories. Some guy named Yoffie says we don't need manufacturing because Google, Amazon and Salesforce.com can carry the economy. Let some hayseed with a 2.8 in management from Kansas State try to jump into the fray with a comment telling the good professor that those companies employ a total of 34,000 people to get $38 billion in sales, while Whirlpool has twice the people and half the sales - and Whirlpool outsources everything it can get its hands on. His theory has a great big gaping hole - manufacturng creates jobs - information for services doesn't. The naysayer from the flatlands won't get far because their beautiful theories cannot stand outside scrutiny. The Harvard Club are not the least interested in facts that run contrary to their thinking, so they close the doors and limit membership to people who they can count on for validation. |
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© 2009 Superfactory by Factory Strategies Group LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter!
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Compression
Free Money, Free Love