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• The Dramatic Spread of Lean Thinking

  Life indeed will be better for all of us with the improvement of management. The benefits of economic success are large. Good jobs are desired everywhere: USA, India, Germany, Singapore… Those jobs provide positive externalities that create a reinforcing loop of improving conditions.
  
  There are many important factors (education, investment, political stability, rule of law…) to economic success. Effective management is among the factors that can provide dramatic increases in the standard of living of a country or community.

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• Statistical Techniques for Quality

  As six sigma has taken the business world by storm in the past 15 years, many organizations have focused on acquiring and implementing the DMAIC methodology with performance benchmarks defined by “sigma levels”. However, after perhaps proclaiming the “six sigma organization” label for the company, it is important for the business leaders to look beyond immediate concerns, i.e. those issues embodied in black belt projects, and adopt holistic and forward-looking perspectives in seriously advancing organizational interests.

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• Innovation and the Creative Commons

  Creative Commons is a license that lets the creators of intellectual property clearly define how that property may be used by others. Partially this license is a reaction to the poor way copyright law is being viewed today (see links below).

  Partially it is tool that gives creators a way to provide for more interaction with their ideas. And this interaction is a great way to market, in the right circumstances. More managers should be thinking about how their organizations can use this tool to improve performance.

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• Managing the Supplier Relationship, at Ford and Elsewhere

  Ford said they were committed to the Deming philosophy in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Donald Petersen, former CEO of Ford Motor Company, was one of those included in the Deming Library Tapes.

   

  Nothing has changed from 1990 to today [October 2005] that explains why Ford saying they are going to deal with suppliers differently now should work any better then such statements 15 years ago. Until they acknowledge what problems in their management system have caused them to fail to use sensible management practices that have been well know for decades I see no reason to believe their claims that they will behave differently this time.

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• Performance Without Appraisal

  The comments on the mini-microsoft blog shows performance appraisal continues to be an emotional topic. People on opposite sides of the debate are very passionate.

  I admit it took me longer to accept Dr. Deming’s thoughts on performance appraisal than other ideas (and that is even with Peter Scholtes being a friend which gave me the opportunity to discuss the idea with him). So I understand it is not an easy concept to accept.

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• How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

  ...The main difficulty is not a knowledge gap, but a performance gap. Most of what Toyota does has been published in numerous booksThe Toyota Way, The Machine That Changed the World and articles (see Curious Cat links to books and articles on Toyota’s management ideas). Reading that information is wise, but that is the easy part. The difficult part is actually managing more effectively...

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• How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

  This idea is simple. Creating an environment where this is actual the way things are, not just the way things are said to be, is difficult. That is why I believe so strongly in Deming’s management philosophy. The organization must be viewed as a whole. Benefits can be gained by adopting some concepts in a piecemeal manner. However, many benefits accrue only when the positive interactions between Toyota Production System (TPS – Lean) concepts occur (as systems thinking would predict).

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• SPC: History and Understanding

  Setting control limits at 3 standard deviations is a decision based on experience. Shewhart, Deming and others determined it was sensible to take resources to look for a special cause was most effective for results more than 3 standard deviations from the mean – it is not a mathematical conclusion but a empirical conclusion.

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• Operational Definitions and Data Collection

  Claims are often made about results that only are justified based on unstated assumptions about the real world results that the data are meant to represent.  But those claims are undermined when there is no evidence provided that the assumptions are valid.  Without operational definitions for the data there is a significant risk of making claims about what the data means that are not valid.

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• Measurement and Data Collection

  I find it useful to ask what will be done with the results of data collection efforts (in order to confirm that the effort is a wise use of resources). If you don’t have an answer for how you will use the data, once you get it, then you probably shouldn’t waste resources collecting it (and I find there is frequently no plan for using the results).

  I have found it helpful to ask: what will you do if the data we collect is 30? What will you do if it is 3? The answer does not need to be some formula, if 30 then x. But rather that the results would be used to help inform a decision process to make improvements (possibly the decision to focus resources in that area). I find, that asking that question often helps reach a better understanding of what data is actually needed, so you then collect better data.

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• Deming and Six Sigma

  I agree aspects of Six Sigma are bad. I also think some aspects of Six Sigma are good. And I think the same things about TQM.
  

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• Six Sigma Pitfalls

  When people say “Six Sigma is great” or “Six Sigma is a waste” often they are talking about different things. But because in both instances “Six Sigma” is used people believe that the meaning must be the same in both cases. It often isn’t. While I find some Six Sigma efforts, books or consultants very useful many others (that also use the words “Six Sigma”) do not offer much of value.
  
  What exactly is meant by “Six Sigma” varies quite a bit. And execution is critical to what makes one program succeed and another fail.

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• Managing with Control Charts

  ...if managers mistakenly tamper with a stable process, believing an occurrence is exceptional, they introduce an external cause, which destabilises it. Targets do the same thing.

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• The Purpose of an Organization

  W. Edwards Deming described the purpose of an organization in New Economics, on page 51, as:

  The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain – stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment – over the long term.

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• Science and Engineering Macroeconomic Investment

  The United States has benefited tremendously from the decisions to fund the National Science Foundation (as well as other investments in science) for decades. Other countries have seen the wisdom in those investments and seem to be committing much more to those investments than the US lately. I think it is very wise of them and will serve the world well. But I fear the United States has already allowed itself to lose a great deal of the competitive advantage it built up in the middle of the last century.

  In the last couple decades we have been able to coast on the lead we had. We could have many of the best minds come to our colleges and then keep them here once they graduated with advanced degrees. However, the lead we had is rapidly being eliminated. This does not mean the US will immediately be uncompetitive. But it will mean one of the great advantages we had will be greatly reduced.

  The United States still has competitive advantages that will continue to serve us well in harnessing advanced technology for economic gain. But others have been making strategic decisions to gain some of those advantages for themselves. And the United States will almost certainly continue to see its scientific and engineering leadership in the world erode. And the economic consequences will be dramatic.

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