April 27th, 2008 - by Mark Edmondson
I attended MIT’s Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) conference in Boston this week. The food was better than the typical rubber chicken and the weather was better than I expect from Boston, but what I found most memorable were the three overarching messages:
1. Market leaders are good at embracing enterprise change;
2. Enterprise change requires a holistic [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Breakthrough Lean Transformation / Kaikaku, Developing People / Continuous Improvement, Executive Coaching | No Comments »
May 10th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Lately, I’ve been running into manufacturing companies that have off-shored much of their value stream. One company’s “China strategy” involves buying components from vendors and also building sub-assemblies at a company controlled plant in China.
That’s fine, and I certainly understand the compelling economics in some situations (for example, commodity items with high labor [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Supply Chain & Logistics, Lean Manufacturing | 3 Comments »
March 14th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Finger pointing, the blame game, excuses for unexpected or poor results…these are all too common behaviors in organizations today. Why is that?
Much of the reason is due to an organization’s intolerance for tactical failures and mistakes. If people know that regardless of intention and the soundness of strategy they will risk their reputation and maybe [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Idea Generation / Engaging Employees, Developing People / Continuous Improvement, Executive Coaching | 1 Comment »
March 13th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Not long ago, I had a conversation with the hired CEO of a $200 million manufacturing firm, and I asked, “What’s your purpose?”
“Our purpose is to provide superior return for our stakeholders and market leading value for our customers” the CEO said.
“Ok, I get that. But tell me why this company exists. And tell [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Idea Generation / Engaging Employees, Executive Coaching | No Comments »
March 9th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
A COO of a large manufacturing firm lamented to me recently about the burden of assessments. “My plant managers see less and less value with the ISO, Baldrige, and corporate assessments.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a corporate requirement for semi-annual ISO assessments, plus and annual Baldrige assessment for each plant. It takes [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Executive Coaching | 1 Comment »
March 4th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Here’s a lesson I learned…again…about how to talk about process thinking and TPS with non-manufacturing people. Last week I visited an organization whose primary output is events (conferences, seminars, workshops) and publications (books, journals, articles – not the physical product, but the content – the intellectual capital and ideas).
They shared that their organization is [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Lean Knowledge Workers | 1 Comment »
February 19th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Eliminating waste, or muda, from processes is a core concept of lean. Most of us know the seven types of waste (see below), yet the trick is “learning to see” these wastes that often are ubiquitous parts of our operations. Below is a list of common symptoms for each waste. If you see [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Knowledge Workers, Breakthrough Lean Transformation / Kaikaku, Lean Manufacturing | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
This is a recounting of a conversation I had with a plant manager about the financial impact of missing shipment of his product for that month (which since it was December, was also be a miss for the fiscal year). The lesson is an old one: be sure to do a marginal (incremental) analysis [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Accounting & Management Systems, Lean Manufacturing, Manufacturing Technology / Automation, Executive Coaching | 2 Comments »
February 13th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Henry Ford embarrassed himself later in life and left his company with a dark legacy surrounding his public and published anti-Semitism. He’s certainly no role model, but his genius for manufacturing is legendary, and he is easy, even fun, to read when he focuses on business. He had a gift for envisioning simple [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Idea Generation / Engaging Employees, Lean Manufacturing, Developing People / Continuous Improvement | No Comments »
February 12th, 2007 - by Mark Edmondson
Driven by our strong economy, many of our manufacturing clients have plans to increase production capacity. I sometimes share with them this strategy that Richard Schonberger describes in World Class Manufacturing:
Increase capacity in increments. If your sales forecast calls for increasing capacity by 100 widgets, start by adding a line that can handle 25. [...]
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Posted in Category: Lean Leadership / Change Management, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Product Development & Launch | No Comments »
Insight, opinion and commentary for the leaders of Lean Enterprise Transformation from some of the world's leading experts.
