Evolving Excellence

High Wage Competition

One of my favorite blogs, Cafe Hayek, had an intriguing post earlier this week titled Competing With High-Wage Workers.  Don Boudreaux's premise is that the knowledge and creativity of domestic high-wage workers can be as significant a competitive pressure on less-evolved companies as foreign low-wage workers.  This is very similar to what we rant about weekly, especially when companies decide to shed tens of thousands of years of experience and knowledge to save a few bucks an hour by outsourcing overseas.  Don's post is in response to an email he received from "anonymous" that tried to defend trade protectionist tactics.

He begins with the classic fallacy of the trade protectionists:

In “anonymous’s” mind, the apparent, relevant difference between today’s world and that of the past is the increasing practicality of workers in low-wage countries to compete with workers in high-wage countries.  What scares “anonymous,” P.C. Roberts, Lou Dobbs, and others – including, I think, The Nation’s Eric Alterman – is this huge source of inexpensive, high-quality output.

Yes, and just deal with it.  Like it or not globalization has happened, there are cheaper workers making high quality products.  Walls and tariffs and barriers will simply isolate us and keep us from participating in the global economy.  So is the answer to send your production to those lower wage countries?  Only if you believe the myths created by traditional accounting, where labor is simply a cost and going overseas creates a savings.  Try not to think about the longer supply chains creating more cash sunk into inventory at risk for obsolescence, or the longer cycle times to reach your customers, or the loss of experience and knowledge.

But here's the interesting kicker: even if you stand still behind trade walls you will also have to compete with domestic manufacturers who have figured out that the value of their high wage workers is not simply measured in terms of parts assembled per hour, but also in terms of creativity, knowledge, and ingenuity that drive productivity improvements.

But I’ll bet that “anonymous,” P.C. Roberts, and most other trade skeptics aren’t afraid of intelligence here at home.  I’ll bet that they aren’t afraid of American ingenuity, entrepreneurial determination and creativity, and advances in both pure and applied science that increase our ability to transform, ever more efficiently, raw materials into consumable output.

A company that stands still, or cries for protection from foreign manufacturers who use cheaper labor, should be afraid.  Because their competition may be their neighbor, not a company from Shanghai.

Trade skeptics write as if the only competition domestic producers face is competition from lower-wage workers in foreign lands.  But workers in the U.S. (and elsewhere) compete also with each technological advance that makes automation of certain tasks less expensive than using labor to perform these tasks.  As humans’ intelligence about technology increases – as, undoubtedly, it has been steadily increasing for centuries – American workers face increasing competition from lower-cost competitors right here at home.

Automation is certainly part of it, but human intelligence also drives productivity by improving fundamental processes.  This is why companies like Danaher, Texas Nameplate, Stanley Furniture, Joseph Abboud, Allen-Edmonds... and yes, Toyota, compete very well from U.S. factories.

Look at the same phenomenon from a different angle: American workers are forced to compete with high-wage workers right here at home – workers who specialize in R&D; engineers who figure out how to produce more output from any given amount of inputs; top-flight managers who succeed at squeezing from given bundles of inputs within firms more output.

That's what lean manufacturing is all about.  Well at least as long as there's an existing order for that output!

Should we fear our increasing ability to transform a given amount of inputs into larger and larger volumes of output?  Would American workers be better off if they faced no competition from such technological advances – if government erected internal tariff walls to protect existing producers from the competition that comes from the minds and efforts of such high-wage workers?

Of course not, which is why we should also not fear free trade.  One way or another you have to improve and learn to compete to survive.  Complaining doesn't do it, harnessing the knowledge of your workers to become lean can.

Free TWI Webinar

If you've been involved with lean manufacturing for a while you have probably started to see some discussion on "training within industry" or TWI. Late last year we announced that Superfactory had signed up to be one of the sponsors for the first TWI Summit to be held in Orlando in early June.

TWI consists of three standardized programs that teach the essential skills needed by all people responsible for the work of others, regardless of their industry: Skill in Instruction, Skill in Improving Methods, and Skill in Leading. The program was developed in the United States to quickly teach people the skills needed to increase production to unprecedented levels in support of WWII. The program was discontinued after the war when US companies focused almost single-mindedly on getting product out of the door. TWI then traveled to Japan to where it played a vital role to quickly rebuild their industrial base. Components of TWI are credited by the Japanese as the foundation for Kaizen and the Kaizen Teian suggestion system and the TWI program continues to be an integral part of the Toyota Production System.

On March 21st the TWI Summit folks will be presenting a free webinar on TWI, going into some of the history, application, and opportunity of the concept.  Superfactory is the sponsor of this webinar, helping bring it to you for free.

Go here to register.  Space is limited. 

Lessons From a Deserted Isle

One of the highlights of our trip to Belize last week was going out to the barrier reef, the second largest in the world.  Getting there required an hour-long boat ride from Placencia, and upon arrival you were treated to a paradise of numerous small islands and atolls.  We were dropped off on Queen Caye for a day of relaxing... our own deserted isle. 

As you can tell from the actual photo, this is a rather small island... it takes about 3 minutes to walk around it, and you're welcome to sit under any of the approximately six palm trees.  A moderate rogue wave would wash right over it.  Surrounding the island about fifty feet offshore is its own reef, creating a shallow lagoon and some amazing snorkeling.

There was the obvious discussion of what would happen if the boat didn't return to pick us up.  How would we survive?  What would be our first survival priority?  This got me to thinking about lean manufacturing (yes, how warped is that?), and how many successful lean transformations are driven by an urgent need for company survival.

Many lean activities take a current state and try to remove waste to achieve a more efficient future state.  Your kaizen team tries to eliminate all the band-aids and redundancies that have accumulated over time, looks at processes through the eyes of your customer to see what truly adds value, and shortens cycle times and reduces inventories.  Along the way you often find you're measuring things wrong, and perhaps even traditional accounting practices incent poor practices.

But you're still starting from a point of "having a lot"... you're removing from a state of unnecessary abundance.  An abundance of waste, but still an abundance.  An organization under the stress of potential business collapse probably looks at it a little differently, but the question is still "what isn't necessary?"

What would happen if you took a different starting point: a blank slate.  Nothing.  Then add only what is value from the eyes of the customer.  Some organizations try this, but it can be daunting.  Some of us have also tried it when starting a new company, which is a perfect opportunity.  If you're a brand new company with zero revenue and perhaps living frugally off of angel investment, what is your first priority?  I doubt it's an investment in expensive MRP software.  It's probably not a convoluted NCMR or CAPA process.  You create the bare minimum required to deliver a high value product to your first customer.

One factoid from a previous career at a Fortune-50 medical device company has stuck in my mind and guided some of my thoughts.  The federal medical device regulations (CFR 21) that applied to this multi billion dollar company were about 25 pages in length.  The corporation turned that into about 250 pages of guidelines, which each division turned into about 2500 pages of operating procedures, which each plant turned into about 25,000 pages of product manufacturing and inspection instructions and forms.  Across 50 plants or so that becomes... well... some wicked large number.  I remember asking a plant QA manager if he could map each plant-level page of documentation to the original CFR requirement, and his eyes widened before basically calling me a non-compliant heathen.

So perhaps a couple things to think about during your next kaizen.  When trying to identify and remove wasteful activities, ask what would be truly necessary if you had a blank slate and zero funds.  And ask what truly creates the need or requirement in the first place. 

Stop Whining and Start Competing

Today's issue of Manufacturing News has a couple of articles on U.S. furniture manufacturers "succumbing to cheap imports."  Two specific companies are profiled: Moosehead Furniture and Golden Ratio Woodworks.  Apparently the "golden ratio" is 1:1.618 and describes any number of natural objects such as the petals on a rose and spiral nebulae.  But apparently it doesn't guarantee an understanding of manufacturing.

On February 8th Moosehead told all 126 employees to find a job elsewhere.  Moosehead used to have 105 employees and now it has none.  The reason?

• The U.S. furniture industry can't compete with Asia.
• After Katrina foam prices in the U.S. doubled.
• Fuel prices have gone up.
• The currency is rigged.
• Large stores buy their furniture in bulk from overseas.
• It's our labor and health care costs.

I could go on with several more quotes from the articles, but you get the picture.  Wah wah wah.  It's not to say those aren't valid concerns, but they are naive to believe that those "competitive burdens" are forcing them out of business.  Ignorance, intentional or not, or a simple lack of passion and desire is what destroyed their companies.

Moosehead Furniture president John Wentworth demonstrates a particular penchant for blaming evil outside forces:

In our situation, we considered outsourcing to China, but we’re a relatively small company with 250 employees at our peak a few years ago. Our problem is we’re not a sales and marketing company. We’re manufacturing.

I have to think about that a bit just to grasp what he means.  It sounds like he considered outsourcing just for outsourcing's sake... a lemming.  But for some reason he wasn't confident in the sales and marketing aspects of that potential decision?  The interviewed then asks Mr. Wentworth how bulky and heavy furniture can be manufactured in China from lumber imported from the U.S. and Canada, and still be delivered cheaper back to the U.S.  Yes, of course it has to be labor cost.

But labor costs to make a piece of furniture there is 20 cents an hour versus an average of $10 to $11 for regular labor in this country. Plus you have to add the cost of health care, which is approximately an extra payroll a month.

Anyone that believes labor cost is truly a competitive burden needs only to look at American Apparel, a company that is very profitable making low margin low tech t-shirts at a factory in Los Angeles while paying above market wages... many times that of competitors who operate in south east Asia.  And Moosehead is in the higher end specialty furniture business where margins should be considerably higher.

Did they try lean and six sigma?  Yes, at least in their own minds.

We’ve been lean for years. We only assemble and finish what is to order. We don’t even inventory packed goods. We inventory some parts but you won’t find much wood in our factory. It’s our labor costs and health care costs — plus, there are no regulatory costs overseas that we have here.

Sorry.  I don't buy it.  Why?  Because contrary to the one-sided bent of the article, there are furniture manufacturers, both high and low end, competing successfully from U.S. factories.  We've written about a couple of them, such as Stanley Furniture, La-Z-Boy, and Vaughn-Bassett.  Stanley deserves special mention as they are battling a bunch of Wall Street investors convinced they must outsource to survive.

Wall Street analysts were apparently challenging him to join most of the furniture manufacturers in the US in their exodus overseas.  Company spokeswoman Robin Campbell said Stanley "does not anticipate using layoffs or reduced work weeks to cut production costs".  Instead, Stanley's plan is to get lean.  They hired a veteran lean guy named Rick Lovorn from Masco to run their four manufacturing plants.  Scheffer says "Stanley will compete by offering furniture customers want, speedy delivery and products of high quality".  They're gonna "ramp up efforts to adopt principles of lean manufacturing, focusing on ways to monitor efficiency and continuously improve production".

It's paying off.  Just three weeks ago they reaffirmed their commitment to domestic manufacturing. 

Quick shipping means retailers do not have to keep an inventory of furniture, Scheffer said, and because products are made and inspected here, retailers do not have to repair damaged pieces.  Prompt deliveries also adds value to Stanley furniture, Scheffer said. “If we tell you something will be shipped on Friday, it will be shipped Friday. That is difficult to do when your supply chain begins on the other side of the world.” Customers are willing to pay more for speed of delivery, value and quality, he said, adding that Stanley believes its domestic facilities give it a competitive advantage because they are located near the company’s customers.

That's a real commitment to lean and to the customer.  So next time you hear of some company complaining they can't compete and may have to shut down, tell them to first take a look around their industry.  I'm betting they'll find a company that has learned about value is different than a simplistic accounting perspective on cost.  If that doesn't work, tell them how pathetic it is that a low margin labor-intensive t-shirt company can be competitive domestically when they can't.

It's a reflection on leadership competency, management knowledge, and commitment.  Unfortunately it's too late for the furniture workers at Moosehead and Golden Ratio.

Going to the Gemba in Belize

I'm back.  Eight days at the Roberts Grove Inn in Placencia, Belize.  Snorkeling on the world's second largest barrier reef, wandering around some Mayan ruins, some sailing, some hikes through the jungle, and quite a few fruity drinks.  With two CIA-trained chefs, the food was amazing... although my wife's diet was predominantly fresh papaya.  I prefered the red snapper, conch steaks, and shrimp.  I highly recommend the location and resort.

But the best aspect of the trip was the fact that I didn't check email, voicemail, the internet, or the tube.  Anna Nicole who?  Geffen called the Clintons what?  Sometimes you need to stare at the ocean a while to realize how silly all of that is.  Of course now I'm having to slug through hundreds of emails and voicemails, and I need to stretch my typing fingers.  It looks like the blog held together with minimal spam, and in fact average readership is up and sustaining almost 30% in one week thanks to a couple posts being picked up by the mainstream media again.  Welcome to all the new readers.

Long time readers know that I often observe some aspect of lean enterprise while on vacation, be it in Argentina, Chile, or Italy.  Belize was no different.  I'll probably have a couple more Belize-related posts over the next few days, but let's start with lean government in the small fishing and tourist village of Placencia.  This town is at the end of a 30 mile narrow peninsula on the southern coast, and the incredibly poor quality of the single access road means that it takes almost 90 minutes to drive those 30 miles.  Although tourism is beginning to help, money for infrastructure improvements is still very hard to come by.

We rode bikes into the town a couple days, and each time around 9am we saw a group of four men and one woman, smartly dressed in business attire, walking down the street.  The attire made them stick out like sore thumbs in a town of fishermen, sailors, and general laborers with a sprinkling of slovenly-dressed tourists.  I asked who they were, expecting the answer to be bankers  or even missionaries.  Nope.

They were the town government leaders taking a daily walk through the streets.  As a group they stopped and talked with street vendors, taxi drivers, tourists, and business owners.  And I presume they got an earful about the potholes and broken street lamps.    

They were going to the gemba.  And not necessarily a receptive or even friendly gemba.  But somehow they had decided it was important to talk to their constituents to understand what was really happening, where it was happening.  They town's leaders may not have the financial resources to do what should be done, but they know how to prioritize what little money they have.  And their citizens are presumably comfortable that they are acting in their best interests.

Take the time to walk your gemba each day.  Learn what is really going on.

You Have to Laugh. If You Don't Cry First.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article (subscription only) on the way that Home Depot, in the wake of CEO Bob Nardelli's departure, is trying to woo back customers with improved service. 

During his tenure, Nardelli worked hard to reduce costs (except, of course, for his own titanic compensation, but never mind that for right now) through efficiency increases and -- no surprise here -- layoffs of skilled, experienced floor staff.  As the article explains,

Home Depot grew to become the world's largest home-improvement chain largely on the strength of its skilled workers, many of whom were former plumbers, electricians and carpenters who were eager to impart their knowledge to do-it-yourselfers. They took pride in helping customers find just the right shade of latex paint or an elusive-size screw.

Then, in an effort to lower overhead,

the company started hiring more part-timers and added a salary cap that drove off the more seasoned workers. The retailer also moved about 40% of workers to overnight stocking positions, ostensibly to clear the aisles of clutter. But it left customers searching in vain for someone in an orange apron to ask about picking out the proper power tool.... Before long, the company had a morale problem. Instead of waiting eagerly on customers, workers too often would be found huddling in an aisle griping about management.

But wait. It gets better. According to the article,

in the past year, Mr. Nardelli realized that he had shortchanged the stores. He appointed a chief customer officer inside headquarters to improve customer service.  Each week, a team of Home Depot staffers scour up to 250,000 customer surveys rating dozens of store qualities.

So let's recap: with sales not quite meeting expectations, the company fired experienced employees because they cost too much.  Presumably the company had to pay some sort of severance.  Then, sales slumped more because part-time and inexperienced staff couldn't provide adequate service, so the company hired back some of the same people it had just laid off.  (I'd imagine that some of their former employees were not available because they hired on at Lowe's.)  Finally, with customer service ratings in the toilet and shoppers staying away, the company invested in a "chief customer officer" and wades through 250,000 customer surveys (a week?  a month?  a year?).

Ten points and a free autographed poster of Bob Nardelli to anyone who counted all the muda: there's the financial muda of paying severance to people that were rehired, and paying for a "chief customer officer."  There's the time and effort muda of firing people and rehiring them -- did the HR staff have nothing better to do?  There's the rework muda of reading, analyzing, and reporting on 250,000 customer surveys, when if they just did the job right the first time, they wouldn't have to deal with.  And then there's the staggering waste of squandered customer loyalty -- not technically one of the 7 wastes, but significant nonetheless.  I only wish someone could calculate how much this little exercise cost the company and the shareholders.

If the story weren't so tragic for the people who lost their jobs, you could have a really good laugh.  But the human cost makes it a very sad tale indeed.

Ignoring the Obvious Solution

While poking around for an online source for the Global Intelligence Briefing for CEOs post last week, I came across another article by Herbert Meyer (no relation) that discussed some of the failures at the CIA.  For obvious reasons I'm not going to dive into the politics of the article itself, especially since it is almost three years old, but the opening paragraph could be applied to many business situations today:

The current flap over the CIA's intelligence failures is a perfect illustration of how things work in Washington: If you have a problem and there is a folder on the desk clearly labeled "Solution to the Problem," people will look for that solution under the desk, behind the desk, down the hall, up the street, and over the hill. Only when they have exhausted all possibilities will they even consider opening the folder in front of them. Mind you, they won't actually do it. They will form a commission to study whether opening the folder might be helpful — and even this only after fighting for a while over the commission's scope and, more importantly, who gets to serve on it.

Well, it keeps people busy and holds down the unemployment rate. And it makes for some terrific lunches and dinner parties. But of course it postpones actually solving the problem until long after everyone has forgotten about it — which, in Washington, usually is the point.

That almost sums up why many of us in the lean world are bang our heads against the wall when we hear of companies laying off, moving to China or Mexico, begging for relief from "competitive burdens" or even simply closing.

The problem is not high labor costs.  If a company making basic t-shirts can prosper in the U.S. while paying above-average wages, any company can.  Similarly it is not currency disadvantages, trade barriers, low margin products, or any other excuse.  Toyota makes a lot of money building cars... in the U.S..  Danaher makes a lot of money exporting low margin products... from the U.S..  It can be done.

The problem is waste creating cost that creates a competitive disadvantage.  The solution is reducing that internal waste.  That's what lean manufacturing and lean thinking is all about.

It's right in front of you.  Learn about lean on Superfactory, read some books, subscribe to this blog and some of the others you see on the left column, and attend some of the conferences you see on the right column.  Unless you really want to accumulate all those frequent flyer miles by going to China every month or so to figure out why you have a couple shiploads of bad product floating over here.

Lean Data Centers?

The January issue of The McKinsey Quarterly has an article titled What's on CIO Agendas in 2007.  Guess what the top two trends are from an information management perspective:

1. A migration to service-oriented architecture
2. The introduction of lean manufacturing principles to data center operations

The first is a little above my head, but here's a brief explanation:

Under this design, common IT tasks, called services, can work smoothly together, regardless of an organization’s underlying technology platform. The concept has been around for years, but as more organizations adopt Web services standards, interest in these architectures has grown. That interest persists even though many executives have been unclear about the precise meaning of the term—a confusion made worse by some vendors’ propensity to label every product as “service oriented.”

Ok... I guess I can figure that out.  But I'm rather amused that the top new trend is something that "many executives have been unclear about the precise meaning of the term."  I guess that's very similar to what many of us face in the lean manufacturing world... the executives are "unclear about the precise meaning of the term."  I hope that's not why applying lean to data centers operations is the second major trend for 2007.

The second trend poised to strengthen in 2007 is the application of lean-manufacturing principles to data centers. In our recent survey, 28 percent of the respondents said that they had already applied or decided to apply lean principles to improve their data center operations. Lean, of course, isn’t a technology but rather a methodology applied to processes—originally in manufacturing operations but increasingly within services, including IT.

Data centers have grown tremendously over the past 10 to 15 years as IT spending has increased and cost-conscious CIOs have consolidated smaller centers into fewer and larger ones. A data center for a typical large enterprise has hundreds of millions of dollars in capital equipment (server farms, mainframes, networking gear, and storage devices), consumes large amounts of electricity, and requires hundreds of highly skilled engineers and technicians to operate. In particular, the labor costs have grown significantly with the commitment of resources to processes such as incident response, problem management, and change management. Applying lean principles can help reduce waste and improve labor productivity by as much as 40 percent in some processes. Nearly one-third of our survey respondents aim to apply lean principles in these centers—a significant share, suggesting that the initial positive results from early adopters are encouraging a wider field of IT organizations to explore this methodology. We will continue to track these trends—and their implications for business and IT leaders—during 2007.

Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of detail on what lean in a data center means.  Allan Alter at the eWeek blog is similarly frustrated.

[The authors] also do not define what they mean by applying lean manufacturing principles to data centers. They only list the reasons those consolidated data centers are so expensive to operate (labor, electricity and waste).  Are "lean data centers" an emerging trend or just another label for the decades old pursuit of efficiency?

Good question.  I guess I could see how lean methods could be used to balance server load, perhaps improve response to issues, and improve maintenance.  The article has some thoughts, but no implementation meat.

I guess that shouldn't be a surprise... it came from a consulting company.

Dressing Lean: Louis Vuitton Edition

Over the last couple years we've told you about some clothing manufacturers that are embracing lean manufacturing methods.  American Apparel is able to profitably manufacture t-shirts at a factory in Los Angeles while paying higher than average wages.  Joseph Abboud is making high-end suits in New England, New Balance is making great athletic shoes, and Allen-Edmonds is making high-end shoes in Wisconsin and Maine.

Three months ago the Wall Street Journal told us of another company in that industry that is embracing lean: Louis Vuitton.  Not in the United States, but in France where some of the rather ridiculous work rules can constrain the benefits of lean almost out of existence.

Lean is an interesting trick for Louis Vuitton as their reputation is built on extremely high quality and exclusivity.  As the article points out, sometimes that exclusivity is artificially generated, as are their prices.  There were several reasons why the company decided to embrace lean:

Vuitton was releasing a new handbag each season. But the factories, which were working on long-term schedules, remained out of step. If a seasonal bag became a hit, the company wasn't capable of ramping up production.

The lean implementation wasn't an easy change:

Specialists worked on one batch of bags at a time. Half-completed purses would sit on carts until someone wheeled them to the next section of the assembly line. Because craftsmen were specialized, it was nearly impossible for Vuitton to quickly switch workers from one type of handbag to another.

But with some help from McKinsey consultants (no comment... at this time...):

The first step was to train workers to handle multiple parts of the assembly process. Gluing, stitching and finishing the edges of a pocket flap, for example, became the job of one worker, not three. To minimize wasted time, the production process for each product was divided so that each worker would need the same amount of time to complete his or her allotted tasks.

The factory floor was reorganized accordingly. Mimicking the small-team format used by Japanese electronics makers, Vuitton organized workers into groups of six to 12, depending on the complexity of the bags or wallets they are making, according to Vuitton officials and company documents. For maximum efficiency, Vuitton arranged the groups in clusters of U-shaped workstations that contain sewing machines on one side and assembly tables on the other. Workers simply pass their work around the cluster.

And success soon followed:

Because workers are less specialized now, they can make more types of bags, which gives Vuitton more production flexibility. Last month, for example, the company shifted more workers to its new $770 Lockit bag, which was selling faster than expected, to boost production.

The system also has enabled workers to detect flaws earlier. At one factory, under the old production system, one of every two $1,240 Tikal shoulder bags had frayed inside seams and needed to be repaired, according to a company document. Under the new production system, those flaws are recognized earlier and can be fixed more easily.

Later Louis Vuitton extended lean thinking to their distribution, administration, and even retail activities.  But there was one quote that made me raise an eyebrow:

"It's about finding the best ratio between quality and speed," says Patrick-Louis Vuitton, a fifth-generation member of the company's founding family, who is in charge of special orders.

Excuse me?  Even if your product's reputation wasn't built on quality, a ratio implies that quality can be sacrificed to some extent.  If Patrick-Louis believes that, then he doesn't truly understand the power and magic of lean (apologies to Norm Bodek). 

But based on what Louis Vuitton has accomplished, I have to think that the company does understand what real lean is all about... because they have experienced it.

Competing on the Basis of Speed

A hat tip to Curious Cat for finding a one hour video presentation titled Competing on the Basis of Speed that was given to a group of software developers at Google.  Mary Poppendieck, who learned about lean while an IT manager at an unknown lean plant, describes how lean manufacturing methods can be applied to software development.  In an interesting twist, some of the software examples she gives can also help us apply lean to manufacturing.

She begins by describing "fast companies," where speed creates a significantly lower cost structure and thereby a competitive advantage. Dell claims speed creates a 50% infrastructure cost advantage.  Toyota brought Prius to market in 15 months.  Speed creates a large barrier to entry for competitors. 

What keeps you from competing on the basis of speed?  Complexity.  There are three faces of complexity: waste (anything that depletes resources without adding customer value), inconsistency, and overload.  "Sustainable simplicity comes from change tolerance in the code."  Thnk about how this can also apply to manufacturing processes.

A few notes on the three faces of complexity from her presentation:

Simplicity: write less code, use less complex interfaces.  The Google home page is simple.  Common architecture, common naming conventions, common development tools.

Inconsistency: defect detection, mistake proofing, and how quality processes create quality products.  If you are testing at the end, then you are testing too late.  One piece flow is the rapid deployment of small feature sets into code development and production.

Overload: cycle time is time from problem detection to problem solution.  Value stream mapping of software development and problem solving.  It makes no sense to have a long queue in the development and deployment process.  Shut off development to balance the process.  Limit work to available capacity.

Sound familiar?  Of course.  Take an hour to watch the video; you might just learn something from those software folks.