Taking Care of Knowledge During a Downturn
18 February 2010
By Kevin Meyer The last couple years have been tough for many organizations, and for some the downturn is continuing. How you treat your knowledge a…
Obvious and Underutilized
16 February 2010
By Kevin Meyer Imagine my surprise when an article at the Harvard Business Review of all rags discussed poka yoke. Imagine my further surprise when…
Andons and Problems at NUMMI
11 February 2010
By Kevin Meyer Interesting article by John Shook in the latest MIT Sloan Review on the culture at NUMMI. The GM-Toyota joint venture let Toyota expe…
Toyota's Shop Floor Still Remembers
8 February 2010
By Kevin Meyer While Toyota executives are scurrying around having lost their way, the employees at their factories are doing what Toyota does best:…
Zappos and the Fallacy of Best Practices
31 January 2010
By Kevin Meyer Companies love to spend gobs of money going on treasure hunts to find new best practices. Tours of great companies, workshops by supp…
Proving Again That Input is Unrelated to Output
24 January 2010
By Kevin Meyer One of my pet peeves is the pervasively popular perception that increased spending somehow must improve the quality of the product. T…
Remember the Perspective of Value
10 January 2010
By Kevin Meyer Sometimes we forget that in the lean world value, and waste, is defined from the perspective of the customer. An article in a recent…
Mandates vs. Kaizen
5 January 2010
By Kevin Meyer A couple weeks ago I contrasted the process of kaizen (small incremental change) versus kaikaku (large step change), particularly in r…