Management Improvement Carnival #35

Evolving Excellence has the honor of putting together this edition of the Management Improvement Carnival.  Past editions can be viewed here.

• True Work, Apparent Work, and Busy Work from Gemba Panta Rei.  "True work is of course the small amount of work in any process which changes form, fit or function as the customer desires."
• The Power of Asking Why from the Lean Blog.  "Asking "why?" in private or 1x1 can also be less embarrassing than asking someone in front of a group."
• Why Do Employees Underperform? from the Lean Six Sigma Academy.  "Muri means to overburden equipment or operators.  In many cases, muri can be avoided by the implementation of some basic forms of standard work."
• Innovation on the Edge from Edge Perspectives.  "Why bother about the edge when everyone knows that all the profit is in the core?"
• Value Stream Maps are Muda from Got Boondoggle.  "The entire value stream mapping process, regardless of accuracy and number of strategic kaizen bursts identified, will just be a waste of time if you do not include an implementation plan to get to the future state and then actually act on this plan."
• It's the People, Not Just the Tools from Shmula.  "What most folks forget is that ‘Kaizen’ was truly build upon the philosophy that 'Toyota builds people and then cars' — that is, Kaizen came from the notion that the collective intelligence of your line workers is valuable and that people, if given the training and the chance, can truly do amazing things."
• Hidden Problems from TPM Log.  "We must encourage people to speak up and identify problems. We must also develop avenues for people to do so in a comfortable manner."
• Toyota Execution Not Close to Being Copied from Curious Cat.  " Toyota’s innovation is not limited to process and execution.  Toyota’s long term vision results in very dramatic innovation (that granted is not getting the press today - check back in 20 years, I think you will be reading about it then)."
• Everyone Must Do Kaizen from Daily Kaizen.  "As we push forward with Lean as our enterprise wide business strategy we must supply the means for people to learn.  We can no longer be selective about who gets to participate in “Lean” activities and thinking."
• Senior Associate Ladder Climber from Evolving Excellence.  "I challenge you to remove all instances of 'senior,' 'junior,' 'associate,' and 'executive' from titles.  I then challenge you to change 'manager' to 'leader.'"