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The Superfactory Newsletter is published monthly to over 50,000 subscribers. Inside Superfactory About -
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Volume 11 Issue 1 | January 2010 | www.superfactory.com |
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From the Editor
Superfactory has recently added a series of PowerPoint presentations on Lean Leadership, including the Gemba Walk, Leader Standard Work, Lean Culture, Lean Organizational Structures, Accountability and Visual Controls, Hoshin Kanri, and Servant Leadership. More information. - 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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Upcoming Events
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Featured Book
By Bob Emiliani This fifth volume of the REAL LEAN series presents a set of fundamental strategies that will help assure Lean management success. These strategies encourage executives to study Lean management history, analyze the failures of other companies, obtain a clearer view of reality at ground-level, better utilize internal and external human resources, and have greater confidence in their ability to become self-reliant in their Lean journey. |
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Featured ArticleMessage from the Future The year is 2060. The changes that have taken place in business over the last 50 years have been many and varied, and mostly for the better. Advances in corporate information technology are astonishing compared to 2030. Yet despite many advances, some management practices have undergone relatively little change. In the 250 or so years since enterprises came under more-or-less thoughtful management, some facets of management have stubbornly resisted additional improvement. For example, there remains a tendency among leaders to treat their stakeholders poorly at times. Also, there is still a surprising absence of flow in information and work activities, from executive offices down to the factory or office floor, and generally between stakeholders, despite the great advances in information technologies. It appears that the management system in use today remains somewhat inadequate relative to the needs of people, which technology cannot remedy. It has been 180 years since the birth of Lean management, beginning with Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management in the 1880s, which also marks the start of modern industrial engineering. Over this period of time there have been only two serous challengers to conventional management: Scientific Management (1880-1940) and Lean management (1975-2030). Both failed as alternative management systems, but they did succeed in adding many new buzzwords and tools to managers’ toolkits. These tools remain in widespread use today, but mostly within the framework of conventional management, which of course is devoid of flow. Lean management has been all but dead since about 2030. It survives in a small number of small- and mid-size companies and only a few large global corporations, not surprisingly, Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda. Toyota started to lose their way around 1998. It recovered beginning in 2010, but lost its way again a few decades later. Managers and employees have struggled to keep Lean management going, which proves there is no such thing as Lean DNA. For some reason it has been less difficult for Honda, who is now the world leader in both personal mobility products and robotic assistance systems for the elderly and people with physical disabilities. |
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Featured Evolving Excellence Blog Post
Lean Leaders and Losers I figure the last day of the year is a good time to look back at the highs and lows - see who demonstrated real leadership in manufacturing and raised the bar for all of us; and to see who dropped the ball. There is no shortage of candidates for both spots - the most noteworthy leader and the most disappointing loser. The disastrous economy in 2009 really squeezed out the mediocre. Companies that grew - even survived - can stake a claim to being pretty well run. And those companies that got by on playing games and pursuing short term money grabs were largely exposed to be the poorly run outfits we knew them to be all along. The lean leader who most impressed me in this tumultuous year is Bob Chapman from Barry-Wehmiller. His company is going to turn a profit, even in the face of a serious downturn in the market for the sort of capital equipment his company makes. Most important, he never wavered from his driving principles of a genuine commitment to the engagement and fulfillment of all of the people working for him. I know that I was deeply influenced not only hearing him speak, but seeing his actions that back up the talk. He is not the greatest public speaker, nor does he know much about the nuts and bolts of lean manufacturing. What he does have, however, are incredibly deeply embedded principles that he drives down to the lowest levels of the Barry-Wehmiller companies with relentless energy. Those principles are all about using the workplace as a tool to make life meaningful for the people who work for him. He takes a back seat to no one in terms of his faith in everyone working in his companies, and his absolute insistence that they all take a personal role in every aspect of the company. He is truly inspirational. Most important, he has stuck by those principles in tough times, and has proven that true respect for people is truly compatible with excellent business practices and excellent results. And the loser is... |
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© 2009 Superfactory by Factory Strategies Group LLC. All Rights Reserved |
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Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter and welcome to a new year! We are now beginning the 11th year of the newsletter!
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Real Lean Volume 5: Strategies for Lean Management Success