Evolving Excellence

'Lean' and 'Good' are not synonyms

by BILL WADDELL

Lean is a subset of profit improvement.  Everything about lean will enhance profits, but there are a lot of profit enhancing ideas and strategies that have nothing to do with lean.  I just thought I would point that out for the benefit of all of the folks out there who want to put every good idea under the lean umbrella.

In writing the blog one of my daily routines (beyond reading 40+ newspapers every morning) is to do a Google news search for 'lean'.  You might want to give it a try.  You will find that most of the results are not actually news reports, but press releases from companies and people trying to promote their 'lean-ness'.  Among the legitimate news stories, you will find that many - probably most - of them fall under the cost reduction heading, but have nothing to do with lean.

Taichi Ohno said, "All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash.  And we are reducing that time line by eliminating the non-value adding wastes."  So the articles about increasing labor efficiencies, reducing the amount of excess material scrapped during production processes, minimizing carbon footprints and material going to landfills, and so much more have nothing to do with lean.  They are probably good ideas.  I don't mean to discourage them - in fact I stand foursquare in favor of many of them - but they are not lean driven, not does the successful application of such ideas make an organization lean.

The problem seems to be taking the idea of "non-value adding wastes" out of context.  In fact, any time you can reduce or eliminate a cost, and it does not detract from the value of the product you are selling, that cost was, by definition, a non-value adding waste.  There is nothing new or lean about doing that.  The history of work is one of ideas and technologies that eliminated non-value adding wastes, but the history of work is hardly one of continual evolution toward lean. 

The debates and often confusion among and between lean and Six Sigma advocates stems from the fact that they get at the same root.  When I went to Motorola University in the early days of Six Sigma and long before multi-colored belts were involved, the originators of the concept endlessly pounded on the mantra "The best quality producer is the shortest cycle time producer, and the shortest cycle time producer is always the best cost producer".  There is an awful lot done under the name of Six Sigma out of this context, as well.

The problem this dumping everything that reduces costs into the lean bucket causes is that it sends the message that organizations can become lean without making the fundamental changes in thinking and culture required to follow the Taichi Ohno and original Six Sigma principle. As a result, they leave the fantastic benefits of becoming truly lean on the table. It is also problematic and quite confusing when so many purveyors of knowledge, be they consultants or academics, miss this fundamental point and preach lean or Six Sigma outiside the context of cycle time and flow.  They seriously mislead those who look to them for guidance and wisdom.

So how lean is your organization?  Is inventory turning much faster? Is the time from beginning to end of core processes much shorter?  Do your customers go from initiating contact with you to completion of that interaction much quicker?  If the answer is no, then you are not particularly lean, no matter what you may have done to cut costs, reduce waste or improve the culture.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/lean-and-good-are-not-synonyms/

Book Stuff

by BILL WADDELL

A couple of comments and thoughts on a couple of books ...

Shingo versus Shingo

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece contrasting Shingo's 'green books'-the original version translated by Shingo's son and the later version translated by Drew Dillon, both brought to western audiences thanks to the efforts of Norm Bodek.  Shame on me for writing, "Dillon made the original a lot more readable, but he also left a lot of fundamental points behind in the effort." I implied that Drew Dillon was the source of the different translations - an assumption I had no basis for making.  Both Norm Bodek and Drew Dillon wrote expressing rightful indignation.  Said Norm, "Dr. Dillion is a great scholar and should receive an apology."  Wrote Drew, "I’m not quite sure what leads you to impugn my work so casually."

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  In truth I have no idea why the two books ended up substantially different, and I do owe Dr. Dillon an apology. Messrs Bodek and Dillon speculated that the cause may have been different texts from Shingo, himself, or in final editing after Dillon's work went to the published, or a number of other possibilities. The cause will likely never be known, but it is probably not important to know why.  It is important to know that Both Norm Bodek and Andrew Dillon have made enormous contributions to the lean body of knowledge and implying otherwise is not something I would ever want to do.

Adventures in Leanland

This is a great lean book - I mean a genuine 'must read' lean book - although I have had to rack my brain to figure out just why.  Russell Watkins is a very well traveled lean guy, and a very, very good writer.  The book he wrote is a sort of 'Shigeo Shingo meets a British Mark Twain' effort.  There is no grand unifying theory, nothing that a well-versed lean student will find that is particularly new, just a wealth of stories and examples of lean application, covering the waterfront of countries, industries and lean facets, written in a very compelling manner.  It is witty, clever, and illustrates the principles with extraordinary clarity.  A consultant like me will find it a treasure trove of examples and anecdotes to use in teaching; a lean leader will find a wealth of ideas to teach the principles, and an executive can get an introduction to lean in a manner that puts it into practical terms, rather than the ethereal stuff most lean leadership books adopt.  Mostly, it is just fun to read.

All Business is Local - Why Place Matters More Than Ever in a Global, Virtual World

In most regards John Quelch and Katherine Jocz have written the sort of marketing book one can expect from a couple of Harvard types.  Lots of traditional theory, tweaked to apply it to the global economy and an increasingly social media dependent world.  There is not a single mention of lean in the book.  That said, its central point - that all business is local - is a vital point for companies struggling to integrate their lean efforts with their sales and marketing strategy.  They write, "... Starbucks doesn't reach customers through five thousand stores, it reaches customers through one store five thousand times." 

It is not possible for Pizza Hut to complete collectively with every pizza store out there.  In fact, each Pizza Hut has to compete with the local pizza joints nearby.  The fact that an individual Pizza Hut restaurant is part of a massive, global corportation really doesn't matter  much.  It comes down to the value, service and prices at each Pizza Hut restaurant compared to that at the local competitor.  Flip that around ... the local pizza parlor owner doesn't have to compete with mega-giant YUM! Brands.  They just have to have a better value proposition than the one YUM! Brands Pizza Hut nearby.

Competing in one store five thousand times - with each store focused on its individual market is right up lean's alley.  Competing with five thousand one-size-fits all stores is mass production, get it from China stuff.

The authors don't tie their excellent message of the market comprising of a whole lot of local markets, each with its own value proposition, back to lean - but you very easily can.  This strikes me as a great book for the lean operations person to have his or her marketing and senior management team read, and then build upon.  Once they understand the importance of local, and begin to ask how to serve their customers one at a time rather than en masse, lean will make a lot more sense to them.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/book-stuff/

Stress Solutions, Not Blame

By Kevin Meyer

Regular readers know that the "respect for people" pillar of lean is particularly important to me - in fact I consider it to be the most critical.  My organization often hears me say that 90% of problems are the result of poor processes, not people, and 9% of the remaining are probably due to poor leadership.

The FAA appears to agree.  A couple years ago I told you how the organization had created a nonpunitive reporting system for air traffic controllers to report incidents.  That led to a dramatic change, which might initially be seen as a scary negative but as most of us immediately realize is a huge positive:

New numbers released by the Federal Aviation Administration show reports of air-traffic errors have nearly doubled in three years. The number of reported incidents in 2007 was 1040, and that number rose to 1887 in 2010, an 81 percent increase.  This cultural change in safety reporting has produced a wealth of information to help the FAA identify potential risks in the system and take swift action to address them.

The FAA was apparently so impressed that they have now expanded the program to other functions.

Federal Aviation Administration officials announced that as part of a new "safety culture" at the agency, they would fully embrace nonpunitive reporting systems, in an effort to generate information that could expose bigger dangers.

The FAA took a half-step in that direction in 2008, creating a nonpunitive reporting system for air traffic controllers. On Wednesday, the FAA said it was expanding the program to employees who maintain radar installations and other systems.

"Make no mistake about it: We don't condone (errors)," said David Grizzle, the FAA's Chief Operating Officer. "However, we presume the good intent of our controllers and are more interested in the free flow of information than we are in punishing for errors."

The FAA's decision also points to a problem many organizations face as they improve - it's easy but very dangerous to rest on positive improvement.

In announcing the new reporting systems, the FAA cast itself as a victim of its success. FAA officials said they used to be able to measure risk by counting accidents. The fewer crashes, the better the agency was doing.

But with the commercial aviation accident rate at historically low levels -- there has not been a fatal commercial crash in three years -- the agency needs to look at other data to identify risky behaviors and incidents, and to address them.

It's analogous to a common misperception.  As a process becomes more stable, the tendency and desire is to measure less and move on to something else.  But in reality the black swans, the long tail events that hide in broad statistical analysis, are the most disruptive and dangerous.  Instead of measuring less frequently, you should measure more frequently to uncover and address the next layer of process variation.

The FAA seems to understand that - and the importance of enabling and ensuring people are part of the data collection process.  With rare exceptions the problems are in the processes, not the people.

Missing the Whole

by BILL WADDELL

 Next month I am participating in a Lean Sales & Marketing event in Indianapolis and, as I start the preparation process, I thought I might share a couple of points I plan to raise guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of a lot of folks.  The first of them is the particularly inane practice of using third party manufacturer's reps.  It is hard to imagine how anyone thinks outsourcing the link between a company and its customers is a good idea.

When the objective is to maximize customer value, playing a circle game with customers to garble the message about what customers actually value - extending the communications chain between you and them - hardly seems like an effective approach.  Having the link be someone who views optimizing your business as a part-time, short term goal make even less sense.  And having that link compensated solely on volume - and not at all on value - is worst of all.

Not much better is having your own sales force, but having all communications with the customers flow through them.  The idea is to have direct communication between yourself and the customer at every level possible, your engineers to theirs, your receivables person with their payables person, the folks on your shipping dock with the people receiving your shipments.  Having your sales person as a communications bottleneck is hardly conducive to engaging your whole company in the value creation effort.  Flip it around and ask yourself, if all your suppliers know about you is what your buyer tell their sales person, what are the chances of anyone at their company coming up with an idea that is really going to improve you?

All of this falls under the umbrella Lou Pritchett had in mind when he said, "The primary job of sales is to represent the customer to the company, not the other way around."  Pritchett, for those unfamiliar with him, was a legendary sales leader at P&G during the heady days when they were cranking out high value, innovative stuff - a far cry from today's P&G that talks to customers rather than listens to them.  Creating value for customers requires knowing what they place value on, and that isn't going to happen with a bunch of third party contractors, communications bottlenecks, or anyone who gets paid on commission.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/missing-the-whole/

My Secret Weapon

by BILL WADDELL

Despite the stacks of books in my office, living room and bedroom, I am not a hoarder.  I get books from every direction - some I buy, many are gifts, dozens are review requests, and I give the good ones away all the time.  There are some I have bought half a dozen times - and given away as many times.  One I have kept for almost 30 years, though, and will never part with is my copy of Shingo's original edition 'green book'.

Those familiar with it might be asking, "30 years?  Impossible since it wasn't published until 1989."  That's not the green book I am talking about - the book I keep is the original green book - the one Norm Bodek cajoled the Japan Management Association to sell him a few copies of long ago.

The one on the right is the 1989 version, translated by Andrew Dillon.  The dog eared, beat up one on the left is mine, translated by God only knows who.  Dillon made the original a lot more readable, but he also left a lot of fundamental points behind in the effort.

In the original Shingo went to quite a bit of trouble to compare and contrast Toyota's production system with Henry Ford's ideas.  Little, if any of this, found its way into later versions.  He discusses "Mr. Solensen's description of Ford System", meaning Charles Sorensen, Ford's production leader. And he describes the Toyota Production System as a "developed pattern of the Ford system", stating that Toyota "enlarged and progressed the Ford system".

Thanks to this book I was able to learn quite a bit about lean from the early Ford system while many other self-proclaimed experts were writing about lean as the opposite of mass production as developed by Ford.  Shingo described exactly where they were identical, and what Toyota had "enlarged and progressed".

I learned the over-arching supremacy of cycle time compression - "perfect performance from shortening production period" - in Shingo's translator's Janglish.  That Shingo citing Frank Gilbreth - but not FW Taylor - was also telling.  These nuggets were largely lost in the later editions.

The original translation was wretched - I have jokingly described it as Shingo being cheap and hiring a nephew who had studied English for two years in high school.  Actually, I have no idea who translated it, but their English skills were severely limited. It took me a few readings to get through, and comprehend, passages such as:

"Defects are 'originated at processing' and 'inspections are only to find the defects', so basic recognition must be necessary.  Therefore, 'if a defect is found, 'information must be immediately transmitted to the processing and an amendment must be accepted at the processing method' so that defects would be reduced.  "Faster the speed of the feed-back function is, faster the reduction in percent of defect is'.  The abovementioned could be phrased as follows.  Judgement inspection ... inspection to find defects.  Informative inspection ... inspection to prevent defects. Unexpectedly, most plants consider that only judgement inspection (inspection for distinction of non-defective and defective products) is an inspection."

Nonetheless, Shingo's book not only gave me a wealth of information unavailable elsewhere, it gave me a leg up on everyone else.  Taking what Shingo described as "Analytical Chart of Process" I was able to analyze processes years before the term 'Value Stream Mapping' was coined. 

So what's the takeaway on all of this - other than the fact that I have a lean resource few others do? I believe it is to accept little from the lean experts unquestioningly.  We are all a product of the information made available to us, and few have comprehensive, first hand knowledge of Toyota's production system, its origins and the underlying principles.  Who can say with certainty how Ohno or Shingo would have applied their ideas to your unique situation?  In the end, everyone has to learn for themselves, which means challenging that which doesn't make sense, and continually asking questions and digging deeper.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/my-secret-weapon/

Shaving Off the Waste

by BILL WADDELL

No one needs any evidence to believe the shaving products business is completely out of control.  Every time you shop for razor blades there is a new spin on them and absurdly higher prices.  You can spend $17.79 plus the cost of the gas to get to the store for four replacement cartridges for a Gillette Fusion Pro-Glide Power yadda yadda yadda at Target - "New", of course, which amounts to almost four and a half bucks a cartridge ...

... or you can spend half that and have these guys deliver them to your house.  

Are they as good as the ones peddled by Gillette for almost $18 plus the gas to get to the store?  Probably, in light of the facts in this court case.  Gillette and Schick battled it out with a lot of lawyers involved over false advertising claims.  By the time you are a couple pages into the court findings you realize neither one of them can back up much of anything they claim in their ads.  By the time you are halfway through the findings you feel like you are eavesdropping on an argument between two little people over which is the tallest midget in the circus.

The moral of the story is that advertising, sales and marketing (unless the sales person is an engineer doing consultative sales), packaging (except to the extent that it protects the product and identifies the contents), and innovation that is new but not more valuable in the eyes of customers is all waste.  And, of course, the cost of lawyers to fight the competitors over who is infringing on each other's waste.  How much of this non-value adding waste is built into products - well, in the case of razor blades, it would seem half of the cost to the customer is wholly without value.

The Dollar Shave Club is doing the same thing the music, video and book download people did - cut out all of that wasteful bricks, mortar, packaging and handling that added no value to the product.  The companies - like P&G and Energizer, the combatants in the absurd court case - are so steeped in the notion that the massive waste under the brand management umbrella is not only necessary but critical to success they are unlikely to ever see competitors like the Dollar Shave Club coming.

Both P&G and Energizer, companies about which I have a fair amount of knowledge concerning their lean efforts, are great at scooping up the pennies on their shop floors wasted on poor quality, unnecessary material handling and labor inefficiencies. But they are blind to the buckets of dollars they waste as a result of their core business models.

This narrow definition of lean - viewing it as a factory issue, rather than an enterprise issue - is way to common.  Easy enough to assume it applies to everyone else, but not you, right up until some guy with a smart-assed YouTube video renders your entire sales and marketing organization obsolete, and your distribution channels unnecessary.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/shaving-off-the-waste/

One Size Never Fits All

by BILL WADDELL

It seems as though a potato chip company called Route 11 went from nothing to a decent little business largely by offering a variety of different types of chips (crisps for our friends who worry about God saving the Queen).  And it would also seem that lot sizes and delivery frequency have an impact on their ability to make money by offering a lot of different varieties.  So they reduced the number of types of chips they sell.  And so we have an economist turned professor turned marketing expert sagely observing, "Determining the best product assortment often involves balancing the financial gains of operating efficiency with the long-term value of the brand. Overly broad assortments can lead to direct and indirect costs that hurt overall profitability. For some brands, overly narrow assortments can undermine their value."

The professor is right about one thing - skinnying the product line undermines value.  He is dead wrong  - or at least has based his thinking on an assumption that is dead wrong - on the other half of his equation.  He assumes that the costs of small lot sizes and more frequent deliveries are static - somehow chiseled on the flip side of the tablets Moses brought down from the Mount -the essence of economy of scale thinking. 

"In Route 11’s case, packaging costs were lower for high-volume flavors relative to low-volume flavors because they could negotiate quantity discounts from the company that printed graphics on the bags. There were also less-quantifiable costs associated with so many flavors, but these costs certainly affected the bottom line. Producing fewer flavors would decrease the number of flavor-related changeovers the production line had to make. Each time the production process was stopped to change to another flavor, equipment had to be washed down thoroughly. Also, retailers that carried some of the slower-selling flavors had to allocate shelf space to them, which sometimes left too little space for the big sellers."

 While all of that accounting logic may well be true enough, reduce the changeover time and devise a JIT delivery scheme and - poof! - bottom line impact goes up in smoke.  On the other hand, accept the professor's logic - follow it to its logical conclusion and eventually end up with one type of potato chip that can be mass produced in staggering quantities and delivered in bulk ... and go head to head with every other mass producing one-chip-fits-all potato chip maker and ultimately fail.  Unless, of course, you can 'innovate' and conjure up an entirely new type of potato chip that can be produced in staggering volumes that is better than the other guys' ... and then hope they don't 'innovate' something that puts you back at square one.

The real root of the problem is that every market consists of a whole bunch of niches of one.  No two people share a common opinion of the perfect potato chip - or the perfect anything else.  The bulk items are perfect for no one - they are simply close enough for enough people to buy them, but virtually everyone is open to switching potato chips if one comes along that is closer to their view of perfection.

Lean, with its small lot sizes and frequent deliveries, is the key to economically providing a broader range of products, leading to greater customer appeal, leading to more sales, leading to more profits.  Economy of scale, mass production thinking is the path that inevitably leads to mediocrity, at best.  It forces sales and marketing to push one-size-fits-all solutions onto a customer base where, in fact, one-size fits-no one.  Price reductions (which means cost reductions which means China), promotions and coupons, clever advertising and the rest are the tools required to force fit hopefully 'close enough' products into markets comprised of niches of one.

In most companies, sales and marketing are completely detached from lean thinking, and lean tools are deployed in a fruitless attempt to improve costs in a mass market, economy of scale business model.  Too bad.  The emerging frontier in lean is sales and marketing.  The good folks at Route 11 ought to think about checking it out.  Or they could follow the professor's logic and how they do against the likes of Frito-Lay selling one-chip-fits-all at Walmart.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/one-size-never-fits-all/

The Reshoring Story of GE Appliances

By Kevin Meyer

Perhaps I'm just an optimist, but it's starting to seem like the discussion on manufacturing in America is changing.  Just a year or two ago it was a struggle to find anyone - outside of manufacturing that is - that believed that the U.S. could be a manufacturing powerhouse again. 

Richard McCormack's Manufacturing & Technology News puts this on display in it's latest issue with a story and accompanying interviews on GE Appliances.  Unfortunately most of what I will quote here requires a $495 subscription, but that could almost be worth the stories in this issue.

After decades of neglect, General Electric has a newfound love affair with its appliance manufacturing division. The 122-year-old company created by Thomas Edison has recommitted itself to developing and producing a new line of innovative products in America. It is re-invigorating its 900-acre Appliance Park located in Louisville with $1 billion of investment in a new generation of designers, engineers, workers and production systems. And for the first time, it is applying the lean methodology to all of its operations.

It's a pretty big deal, but perhaps even bigger is the realization - and example - that even the worst outsourcers can learn that total supply chain cost can trump supposed "cheap labor" savings.

When asked by Manufacturing and Technology News if the 80 percent drop-off of manufacturing workers was caused by robotics, automation and high levels of productivity, virtually every GE person who responded said the same thing: No. The loss was due to offshore outsourcing.

So what did they do?

In moving production back to the United States, GE decided that every aspect of the water heater needed to be redesigned through a team approach under a lean planning system that included GE’s sales division, designers, product and process engineers, accountants, executives and workers. It included the involvement of plumbers, retailers and customers. Anybody involved was allowed to suggest improvements. “What this shows is what can happen when we all sit down and work together,” said GE International Union of Electrical Workers President Jerry Carney.

In the process, it made the unit more affordable, reducing the retail price from $1,599 for the product made in China to $1,199 to $1,299 for the unit manufactured in Louisville. The production line uses the common lean practice of a “pull” system based on demand. There are visual controls. Inventory is in plain sight. The factory is bright,

The article goes into considerable detail on those changes, including the fact that they can only claim "Produced in America," not "Made in America" because they could not find a domestic source for some key components required to achieve the domestic content rule.  Sad, but perhaps that will change too.

And you read that right - the factory is still unionized.  In two accompanying articles Richard interviews both key company officials as well as the union chief.  First from the company side of things.

Q: When you were considering moving production of the water heater from China to Louisville, were labor costs a major consideration?

Rick Calvaruso [Appliances Lean Leader]: The cost of wages is only one factor. What you have to look at is total cost of the whole product. When you make a product far away from where consumers buy it, you have costs of shipping, duties, customs and you have to carry more inventory.

Keith Burkhardt [Marketing Manager]: You can respond quicker if your factory is domestic. You have time on the water when you manufacture a product abroad. It takes time to respond to fluctuations in demand. We had a very successful promotion last fall where we sold more units than we expected to and as a result we were out of stock for a lot longer than we would have been had we had a domestic factory.

Q: Do you think what you are doing can be replicated by other large OEMs that have outsourced so much of their production?

Rich Calvaruso: We hired [lean export] John Shook [chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute] to coach us and I’ll just tell you what John said. He said that he normally doesn’t care whether or not a company does lean well. “But you guys are GE. You guys matter. What you are doing here is not only important for GE Appliances Louisville, Kentucky, it’s important for the whole country.” So some of us say, “Wow, that is pretty impressive.” But somebody has to show the way because we can do these things. This is a real. This is a real factory, with real people making real stuff.

Steve Downer [Product General Manager]: There will be a lot of eyes on this place and we welcome it because these are really exciting times.

Q: Do you think the United States will see a big insourcing trend?

Steve Downer: I think it’s going to be case by case [based on] very thorough analysis. I would expect every company to evaluate why this is a good business.

Rick Calvaruso: There are a lot of things being talked about outside of here. If you listen to what [James] Womack [founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute] says, the momentum starts to build back. The whole notion of going to the cheapest labor place isn’t always the best answer. You see continued inflation in China. It’s not as cheap as you think to put stuff on a boat and ship it half way across the world. Plus you have to have all the inventory and you have to hope six weeks or eight weeks before a customer wants to buy it that you bought the right stuff. The world changes fast. People may want something different and if you have to wait a long time, they’re going to buy something else.

And from IUE union president Jerry Carney:

Q: There is widespread perception that unions have killed American manufacturing because they have refused to budge. They got paid too much and stuck with their old work rules. One worker only does one thing. The union’s militancy in trying to protect jobs has meant they’ve lost them all.

Carney: That’s all changed. We know we have to be globally competitive. We know we can’t just look at what’s happening right here. We have to look at other appliance manufacturers to make sure we are competitive with them, otherwise we will lose our jobs. If I keep a closed mind and keep my eye only on my union hall, then I’m not doing my workforce any good because these jobs will leave here in a heartbeat.

Q: Why did it take GE so long to wake up to lean?

Carney: I don’t know.

Q: How about you as a union?

Carney: Our union international president Jim Clark is a big promoter of lean. He comes out of the automotive industry. Years ago, he was watching all of these manufacturers closing down and said that if IUE didn’t embrace lean, we would be closed down as a whole. He was in Evansville, Ind., at Whirlpool represented by the IUE. They closed down last year. It was the same size facility as our refrigeration plant with the same number of employees. It closed and went to Mexico. Lean will help us bring jobs back.

Q: Does the lean focus on eliminating waste mean eliminating jobs?

Carney: It’s not always a person that is waste. Lean takes the waste out of a process, but if we have waste and we have two people able to do a job that three people can do, you pull that third person out and take $40,000 or $50,000 off that line. We become more competitive with Mexico or China. Our agreement with General Electric is if I can take one person off the line, we’re going to create another job for that person and it will help us bring back more work from overseas. There is no layoff.

No layoffs for lean improvement policies are common, but at a company like GE?  Are pigs flying?  And we've been telling you about the Whirlpool nonsense for years.

The main story and accompanying interviews are several pages long and also discuss the issues with skills and hiring, government regulations (from both sides), struggles at other GE facilities, and struggles with suppliers.  I wish I could reprint more here, but that would be doing Richard a disservice for a great piece of reporting in Manufacturing & Technology News.

As for GE - this is a good story.  But GE doesn't exactly have the best reputation from a manufacturing in America standpoint, so the proof will be in the pudding.  We'll be watching.

Gettin' Geeky About It

by BILL WADDELL

I recently had the opportunity to help a client hire a new operations leader - and the job went to the person who was "geekiest" about manufacturing.  An interesting qualification but a critical one.

The company had a unique approach to interviewing and assessing the finalist candidates that included beginning the day with having the candidates take the first half hour to talk to the assembled senior management team about whatever the candidate wanted to tell them.  The rest of the day followed more traditional lines - a series of interviews with various people who asked them more traditional questions.  Most candidates devoted that half hour to what you would expect - a review of their resume and life history, expressions of commitment to their families, a lot of talk about their personal interests, and so forth. 

The person who got the job was a guy who tried to do the same but was constituionally incapable of sticking to his script.  Time after time when his self-description touched on manufacturing he would stray down some manufacturing rabbit trail with a passion he could not control.  Turns out that is exactly what the company wanted in their operations leader - someone for whom manufacturing was not just a career but a passion.

It was their head of marketing who called it out.  Her criticism of the first candidate of the series who came in for the interview was that he didn't get "all geeky about it".  She wanted someone running the factory who sailed right over her head with his knowledge and enthusiasm.

The good manufacturing consultants I know are that way.  They do what they do because they love everything about manufacturing.  I know I'm that way.  The real motivator for me is that I get to go into a lot of factories and meet a lot of manufacturing people.  Hanging around factories and talking about manufacturing is as good as it gets for me.

My best boss was a real geek -not much in the way od social skills, naive and completely uninterested in office politics - obsessed with the operations and everything about them.  Dean Ruwe from Copeland where I had my first real exposure to lean was a manufacturing geek - a bit more polished but just as obsessed with diving into every new idea and exploring every nuance of production.   When I think about the companies I know that are really outstanding, every one of them has one or more people in positions of serious influence who would fit that marketing leader's criteria - they 'get all geeky about it' whenever they have the opportunity.

Most companies have operations folks who are technically competent, solid resumes with good experience, but they do their jobs with professional detachment.  The good ones are not capable of such detachment.  They do what they do because they love it.  Their spouses have accepted the fact that the geeks will come home at the end of the day and talk abut manufacturing.  The geeks will leave trails of books and articles behind them at work and at home,and somehow manage to find like-minded geeks at parties, in airports and in just about any other social setting.

The business world has fully accepted the inevitability of geeks in IT and accounting.  It needs to do the same in manufacturing.  Geeks are life-long learners, passionate explorers of ideas, Quixotic in their unreachable quest for technical perfection, and most energized when debating the arcane points of their trade with other geeks.  As such, they transcend people with strong, but static, credentials.  It is increasingly apparent to me that finding the geeks in the organization, hiring new ones, and promoting and supporting the geeks is a critical element of transforming the organization from being technically strong to being extraordinary.

Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/gettin-geeky-about-it/

A Great Manufacturing Story

by BILL WADDELL

If you love manufacturing, you gotta love this story -