They've Seen The Light
25 August 2006
Just a brief, uplifting note on which to end the week ... A few days ago I noted the hypocrisy of an outfit called Mine Safety Appliances (MSA) which…
Lean Serenity
23 August 2006
If manufacturing executives drank a little more they just might have an easier time pursuing lean. While it is not the exclusive property of Alcoholi…
Managing Through A Rear View Mirror
20 August 2006
Sometimes it can be pretty hard to tell whether folks are really dumb, or they are actually smart and are just being dishonest. The Mine Safety Appli…
Whirlpool, Sealy, and the Nike Factor
7 August 2006
Two stories caught my eye last week which helped demonstrate the dichotomy in lean thinking today. The first was Whirlpool's announcement that th…
A Touch Of Class
3 August 2006
Believe it or not, I don't enjoy blogging about the sleazy manufacturers who give all of us a bad name, or the charlatans who make a travesty of l…
And Another One Bites The Dust
1 August 2006
Kodak has made it official. Another once great American post World War II manufacturer is officially and completely out of the manufacturing business…
You Do The Math
20 July 2006
A couple of guys named William - Trudell and Carreira - recently wrote a new lean book called "Lean Six Sigma That Works" and, while I haven…
Manufacturing and Insourcing at Google
5 July 2006
If you had to list the top manufacturers of computer servers, you would think it would be fairly easy... 1. Dell 2. HP 3. IBM 4. ... Google Goog…