Last week, the topic of whether Japanese culture is the cause of the lack of lean success in the U.S. came up over at NWLean, and a lot of folks weigh…

Another performance measurement of the auto industry came out, with the usual results:  Toyota way out ahead of the pack, followed in order by Honda,…

A few days ago, I announced that Economy of Scale was dead.  Those who took the time to read the comments may have noted that Eric Husman disagreed.…

I just returned from a couple weeks of R&R in Italy, and it looks like I have quite a bit of reading to do to catch up on.  Last year while visiti…

When Coke and Walmart tussle over distribution issues, it should be a clinic of leading edge thinking.  The rest of the world should be able to sit ba…

Sometimes a title conveys all you need to know to judge something.  For instance, I heard that Toby Keith approached Willie Nelson at an awards show a…

It is about to become painfully, crystal clear:  The essential innovation Toyota made was SMED - Single Minute Exchange of Dies. Nothing else about th…

Costikyan Jarvis, of Jarvis Cutting Tools, recently wrote to me about a manufacturing executive program he recently attended at Harvard, in which the…