Fortunately the other outstanding lean bloggers have taken up the torch, sparing me from having to wear the 'curmudgeon mantle', allowing me to concentrate on the manufacturing news.
Mark Graban at the Lean Blog ridicules, trashes and scorns GM quite effectively. I can only add the comment that, since the GM/Delphi pronouncements shrink the companies, but do not change either business model, the only valid assumption we can make is that the deal will enable both outfits to maintain recent trends, just at an accelerated rate.
Mike Wroblewski at Get Boondoggle eloquently addresses the recently announced lost luggage statistics for the airlines. About 1% of it finds its way to Never Never Land, on average leaving some unlucky soul from every flight the last man standing as an empty carousel goes around and around.
Finally, Kathleen Fasanella has found one of those news items that leaves you scratching your head. The Wall Street geeks and the Academic eggheads have gotten together to determine the 20 Most Important Tools of all time. The abacus came it at number 2 and the pencil came in at #4. The hammer did not make the list. Tools for counting stuff are, of course, much more important than tools for actually making stuff.
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In the manufacturing news, Secretary of Commerce, Carlos M. Gutierrez, speaking at the NAM National Manufacturing Week conference in Chicago waxed eloquently about the importance of energizing American manufacturing, but the whole thing will turn itself around if we can only get more engineers.
In a related story, Mr. N R Banerjee, vice chancellor of the Bengal Engineering College and Science University in India is worried that India, in general, and his school, in particular, keeps cranking out a glut of engineers, but manufacturing is not growing. "Manufacturing sector needs to be revived. Where will the engineers go?" he asks.
Well, Mr. Banerjee, since having engineers loitering around every street corner in India may not have created a manufacturing economy all by itself, we know for a fact that it will here. In fact, our national manufacturing strategy is built entirely around it. Have 'em report to Mr. Gutierrez' office.
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In Cincinnati, Ohio, what was once a great manufacturing center is rapidly turning into an endless line of shopping centers, and the writers at the Cincinnati Business Courier are worried about it. Their speculation is that the key to manufacturing in the future is flatness. Since Indianapolis and Columbus are pretty flat places, it is easier to build factories there. I'm not sure they are really onto the most important issues.
Across town, the students from Xavier University kept 80 high school students captive in the cafeteria for half the night, barking at them haranguing them, and being generally abusive in order to teach the youngsters what manufacturing is all about. They have been doing it for years. Their focus was the oppression of the workers in 'sweat shops', but they do not seem to have been too concerned about drawing the line too clearly between sweat shops and any other kind of shops.
I wonder if teaching teenagers the abuse of human rights inherent in manufacturing, instead of teaching them the concepts of six sigma and value streams, as Jim Womack suggests, doesn't have more to do with Cincinnati's problems than the flatness of the terrain?
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Speaking of abusing the fundamental human rights of manufacturing workers, the news from Denmark is that the number of companies that serve beer to workers while they are on the job has been cut from 75% a few years ago to only 13% now. There is no problem with employees still drinking beer on the job - just the companies have stopped serving it. One company has outraged the workers by taking the extreme position that workers can only drink beer while they are on their breaks.
I don't know anything about the particular companies involved, but if they are anything like the organizations mentioned previously in the blog, I would have to side with the workers on this one. Staying drunk may be the best way to get through the work day.