From the Editor

Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter!

Over the next few months we will be changing our name to "LeanCEO" reflecting our increasing focus on lean leadership in a variety of industries, including manufacturing. A new website is under development that will create a depth and breadth of community and content. Targeting launch in April.

In recognition of its two year anniversary, our partner Gemba Academy is offering a promotion of 19 free DVDs (really!) when purchasing a six or twelve month subscription to the Complete Lean Package. Gemba Academy just added a seven module online course on Leader Standard Work.

Gemba Academy now offers 146 HD-quality online video training modules on a wide variety of lean topics. More information here.

- Kevin Meyer

Manufacturing Excellence News

Stories of interest to the lean community.

• Boeing grows 787 completion space
  Bizjournals.com - Steve Wilhelm - Feb 23, 2011
• GW Plastics puts millions into toolmaking
  Plastics News - Mike Verespej - Feb 22, 2011
• Supply chain: Making and breaking the business
  ComputerworldUK - Rob Garretson - Feb 21, 2011
• Herman Miller Factory Generates 15 Pounds of Waste Per Month
  Treehugger - Lloyd Alter - Feb 17, 2011
• Manufacturing moves from Line to Lean to Live
  just-style.com - Feb 16, 2011
• Leadership Starts at the Top
  IndustryWeek - Josh Cable - Feb 15, 2011
• Why isn't the economic upturn leading to job gains?
  San Diego News Room - michele nash-hoff - Feb 15, 2011
• The German Model Economy: A Lesson For US Manufacturing?
  Manufacturing Business Technology - Feb 15, 2011
• Maruti, Hero Honda try to control costs
  Times of India - Pankaj Doval - Feb 16, 2011
• Quality control tools cut the risk of costly recalls
  Automotive World - Antony Bourne - Feb 4, 2011
• Lean manufacturing in the spotlight gets theory put into practice
  Materials Handling World Magazine - Feb 20, 2011

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!

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Those of you with iPhones and who regularly read a variety of lean blogs including Evolving Excellence will want to check out Lean Daily, a new, and free, lean blog aggregator app. More information.

Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:

• The Sheriff Goes to the Gemba - A new sheriff demonstrates the power of the gemba, data, and communication with the customer.
• The Shock Would Kill Them - Customers inherently understand value, and will reward companies that provide it.
• Wrapping their Heads Around Value - The waste of physical carriers killed the CD and video stores.
• More Problems is a Good Thing - The FAA is rightly excited about an increase in air traffic problems.
• Lessons from the History and Hypocrisy of Politics - The current mess in Washington does have some lessons for the rest of us.
• Yes, There is Manufacturing in San Francisco - Another niche player demonstrates it is possible to manufacture low margin products in supposedly high cost areas.
• Making or Breaking Culture - Good companies, and leaders, do what is right - not what happens to be in the policy manual.
• The Outsourcing Lesson of Boeing, Part 1 - What the delays in the 787 can teach us.
• The Outsourcing Lesson of Boeing, Part 2 - The second lesson - your outsourced suppliers may become your competitors.
• I'll Take Waste for $400, Alex - The leadership lessons of Jeopardy.

Visit the Evolving Excellence blog...

Featured Discussions

The LeanCEO LinkedIn Group has over 5,800 members networking and discussing various aspects of lean manufacturing. Hot discussion topics this month include:

• How should I begin a lean makeover for two plants?
• What are the core values of lean?
• There does not seem to be enough emphasis on "respect for people"
• Turning lean into a gulag.

Join the LeanCEO LinkedIn Group to network with and learn from a group of lean leaders!

Upcoming Events

View the full events calendar...

Featured Book

Editor's note: Congratulations to Steven and Michael - we just learned that Lean IT won The Shingo Publication and Research Award!

Information Technology is supposed to enable business performance and innovation, improve service levels, manage change, and maintain quality and stability, all while steadily reducing operating costs. Yet when an enterprise begins a Lean transformation, too often the IT department is either left out or viewed as an obstacle. What is to be done? This book shares practical tips, examples, and case studies to help you establish a culture of continuous improvement to deliver IT operational excellence and business value to your organization.

More Information | Previous featured books

Featured Article

Zenjidoka - A Simple Tool for a Complex Problem
 
By Norman Bodek

I have long-admired and respected Toyota. I have been to their factories, published and written books and articles about their revolutionary production system, known many of their brilliant people, and taught their methods to thousands of students. Like many of Toyota's admirers, I was shocked and saddened by their disastrous unintended acceleration problems and its tragic results. My students and friends have continued to ask me, "How could Toyota have let this happen?" Where did the world's quality leader go wrong and how can Toyota and YOU ensure that problems like this will not manifest into millions of recalls - billions of dollars of losses?

After studying the recent problems at Toyota, I have reached this conclusion: Had the tools of the Toyota Production System been extended from the factory floor worker to every employee who makes contact with the customer, Toyota could have dramatically reduced the resulting financial impact and human tragedy. This article is the first in a series to address this idea in some detail.

Jidoka - The Original Respect for People

Jidoka is one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System. It means applying the "human touch" to immediately address manufacturing problems at the moment they are detected. Jidoka is used at Toyota to empower every worker to stop the assembly line whenever a quality problem is detected. The worker pulls a red cord and the entire assembly line stops, idling every machine and every worker on that line until the problem is solved or a remedy is found to prevent a defect moving forward. When the line stops, fellow workers run over to the person who pulled the red cord to help them resolve the problem. In reality, the problem resolution often takes less than a minute and the line is again up and running. In the typical Toyota plant, the line is stopped dozens of times each day.

In this article, we discuss how Jidoka can be applied to the world outside of the factory. Dealers, sales people, and service technicians interact daily with customers and have countless opportunities to identify and react to problems before they spiral out of control. Like many aspects of the Toyota Production System, Jidoka is a simple common-sense methodology, with many powerful benefits.

Read the entire article | Previous featured articles

Featured Evolving Excellence Blog Post

Wrapping Their Heads Around Value
by Bill Waddell

As everyone pursuing the lean path has known for as along as they have been on the path, the heart of it all is eliminating waste - and waste is everything that does not create value for customers.  The challenge is often getting management to honestly determine what creates value and what doesn't.  In areas such as finance and accounting, sales and marketing, HR and administration little or no value is created in the eyes of customers, yet in many companies these organizations yield quite a bit of power and influence.  So getting them on board with the notion that the company needs less of them is culturally a tough nut to crack.

Nonetheless, the company with the best value proposition wins - the one that delivers the most value for the price charged, and the one that spends the greatest percentage of its total cost on activities that create value.  Whether management understands and accepts that or not, it is a fundamental reality; and nowhere is it more apparent than in the news business.

I read 31 news sources every day.  I can't say I read any of them from cover to cover.  More honest to say I skim the headlines from 31 sources and read the few stories in each that grab my attention.  I do not have a single newspaper or magazine delivered to my home, however.  There is no need.  The value is the the information - and money spent on paper and logistics to transport the paper to me is pure waste. It does not make the information I am looking for any better.  In fact, it would detract from it because the time required to put the information on paper and transport it to me slows down the news delivery process. Newspapers across the country are filing for bankruptcy - most of them going through a restructuring of some sort or another as the owners deny the reality that they add no value, and rationalize keeping the waste of paper, ink and delivery alive.

It is also obvious to just about everyone when it comes to music, movies and books.The value of music is sound - a physical CD is complete waste - if anything the sound degrades in transferring the digital recording to a physical medium, then back to sound.  More significant in the music industry, with the advant of iTunes and Walmart music downloads no one has to waste their money buying the 8 songs on a CD they don't like in order to get the 2 songs they do.  The utter waste of 80% of the music we used to buy is disappearing, and artists are increasingly being paid only for their true value creation - only those songs people like.

Read the rest and comment... (16 comments so far)