When it comes to quality management, there are surprising similarities between what was suggested in the 80s and what we barely have seen the start of in industry today. In this post, I discuss how Juran’s CWQM-concept from the mid-1980s is both valid and useful for companies rolling out global production improvement programs today.
Kudos to the quality gurus
What do the quality gurus of the 80s think when they read the modern literature on lean & co? Have we moved beyond their original ideas? Or do we just say the same things using fancy, new words? While preparing a paper for the TQM Journal, I recently re-discovered the wisdom of the 80s. And what a wisdom! This is far too important knowledge to discard as blasts from the past; the ideas of Juran, Taguchi, Garvin, Crosby, Shingo, Deming, Feigenbaum and Ishikawa remain fundamental for competitiveness. In this post, I briefly explain the key contributions of each of the top-eight quality gurus. Kudos to the gurus!
Moods of Norway towards global transparency and happier people
This week, I drove through Nordfjord, one of the world’s most beautiful corners, on the Norwegian west coast. There—in the prosperous and peaceful countryside—problems in China’s and India’s factories seem far, far away. But they really aren’t. Nordfjord is home to several successful apparel companies: Ricco Vero, Skogstad, and Frislid, famous in Norway and beyond. However, the iconic Moods of Norway is the best known of all. After repeated pressure from consumers and a Norwegian NGO, Moods of Norway finally went public with a list of worldwide suppliers [1-3]. That’s a good start, but not enough! It is admirable that they want to make “happy clothes for happy people”—but do they want to make people happy?
Why my mother drives a Toyota: The Toyota Production System
My mother just got her new car. After driving a problematic Renault for many years, she decided to go for a Toyota Yaris. That’s an excellent choice for her needs. Despite Toyota’s recent recalls, it continues to deliver the best quality at the best price. The choice of the Toyota also gives me a good opportunity to eventually write about an essential core of my research: The Toyota Production System—the mother of all XPSs.
My mother’s new Toyota Yaris
Extreme quality for extreme conditions: The Kongsberg Group likes NTNU
Why do 9 corporate presidents and 20 other high-ranked employees from one company hand out buns and coffee at my university today? Surely they made my morning more pleasant, but that doesn’t deliver the shareholder’s return on investment. Or will it… in the long run? This company believes students are more important than one day of business-as-usual. This is the story of why quality starts at the university for a world-leading Norwegian firm: The Kongsberg Group.
Better-operations.com, now a self-hosted blog!
Hosting factory visits: 10 best practices
Visiting more than 40 factories all over the world this year, I have seen both good and not-so-good practices for hosting factory visits. In this post, I share some learning points: here are ten best practices for factory tours.
Waving the flag for Swedish Manufacturing
The winter sport season has barely started as Norway’s victorious skier, Petter Northug, kicks off his mockery season of our neighbor to the east: Sweden. A few days ago, in the Cross Country World Cup in Gällivare, Sweden, Northug passed the finishing line first—before Sweden—and with a Swedish flag. As the anchorman in the Norwegian cross-country relay team, he made sure that Norway won over Sweden at their home ground once again—and took great care that they knew… At the same time, I spent my third week in Sweden this year. As a student of business, I know that Sweden is a world champion in a “sport” that isn’t publicly celebrated but matters thousand times more than cross-country skiing: Manufacturing!
Making veggies flow in Macedonia: Better layout with Closeness Rating Analysis
This autumn, a brand new food factory opened in the small town Gevgelija in Southern Macedonia. The successful entrepreneur Viktor Petkov has since 1992 built a viable company that employs over 100 persons during peak season. His company, Vipro, produces organic food from fruits and vegetables. In September, Vipro ceremoniously opened their new facilities. My colleague Lars Skjelstad and I were invited to join as “guests of honour” because we have assisted Vipro in planning the new factory layout. In this post I tell how Closeness Rating Analysis (CRA) helps plan a flow-oriented layout.
Applying Program Management Theory to XPS
This post is an excerpt of my newly published paper “Managing strategic improvement programs: the XPS program management framework”, published in the peer-reviewed and open-access Journal of Project, Program and Portfolio Management (Vol. 3, No. 1). The complete paper is available for download at my publications pages.
Can ERP support the implementation of lean production?
Yesterday, my colleague Daryl Powell successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Investigating ERP Support for Lean Production” at the Department of Production and Quality Engineering at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Over the last three years, Powell’s research has received much interest from the international Operations Management research community and from industrial companies struggling with the mismatch between lean production and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning systems). Is lean production and ERP solutions for pull production mutually exclusive?
Nissan Production Way: A better alternative to TPS?
I have visited three former Nissan Diesel factories in Japan this week (today owned by a foreign multinational). The plants operate according to the Nissan Diesel Production System—a bi-product of the famous Nissan Production Way (NPW). I believe that too many lean-lovers focus too heavily on the Toyota Production System (TPS), and know too little about alternative approaches to world-class production. The core idea of an XPS is exactly that the X should be tailored to the company, and not be a TPS-blueprint. In fact, the NPW might provide a better benchmark for many Western manufacturers than the TPS…
The bus driver from Bangalore: Making chaos flow
Respect for the Bangalorian bus driver—who probably has the world’s toughest job. While I visit Volvo factories in Bangalore this week, I feel the pulse of a thriving city that literally bursts into the streets with all its energy. The traffic in India’s third largest city is straightforward d r e a d f u l. Continuous honking seems to be the most important trick to come ahead and stay alive. In this total chaos of noise, pollution, people and vehicles, I am surprised to find the traffic flowing surprisingly swiftly. How do the Bangalorians create flow of mere chaos?
Academy of Management safari in Boston (@AOM Annual Meeting 2012)
In the book Strategy Safari, management guru Henry Mintzberg said that no single perspective or theory can sufficiently cover strategy (or management) as a field; the field is an elephant that requires many eyes and minds to properly understand [1]. Mintzberg is one of the speakers at the Academy of Management (AOM) annual meeting in Boston this weekend. But he’s not alone: more than 11.000 people (!) choose to spend the best time of the year in clammy conference rooms to present and discuss their incomplete opinions on management. (This is the point where I would make a funny remark about that, but the joke would literally be on me). At this mammoth conference, the elephant of management is—for the 72nd time—under attack.
Lean in Harley-Davidson: Launching the Harley-Davidson Operating System
Harley-Davidson! …no need for more introduction. This week, I toured the assembly plant in York—the biggest of four H-D manufacturing plants in the US. Together with H-D tattooed bikers with close-fit leather vests, I had the great opportunity of seeing the factory from inside. Harley is well-known for the feelings it evokes in its customer base, and the H-D culture is an unavoidable teaching case in any marketing course. Few other products better symbolize the American dream. Therefore, my question when visiting the York plant was naturally: is it an American dream factory?
Harley-Davidson Factory in York, PA, offers free tours (Photo: better-operations.com)
MIT DIY at iTunes University
Ever wanted to follow courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)? Harvard? Or, if you prefer, the University of Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, Berkeley, Georgetown, University of Tokyo, or the Norwegian University of Science and Technology? Well, you can. It is free and you can easily Do-It-Yourself (DIY). Why not MIT DIY? … Here’s how I used iTunes University and YouTube to substantially improve my statistics skills over a few weeks.
The sun sets on REC (sometimes, no XPS in the world can retain your competitiveness)
The Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) has recently closed its second of two factories in its home country Norway. All the state-of-the-art technology and lean improvement initiatives in the world could not save the Norwegian factories from shutting down this year. The REC case is a good example of how benefits of process improvement programmes can be far outweighed by global politics. A natural question to raise is then; under such conditions – is an XPS programme insignificant?
The Honeywell Operating System (HOS) reports flourishing success
In a recent article, The Economist explains how the electronic giant Honeywell International transformed “from bitter to sweet” over the last eight years following an XPS strategy. In my research I search for evidence for how and why corporate production systems (XPS) succeed and/or fail. The Honeywell article paints a picture of how the Honeywell Operating System (HOS) literally saved the company from bankruptcy and turned it into a multi-billion profit machine. Although the evidence is anecdotal, the managers interviewed in the article provide convincing statements of XPS success:
By working smarter, an XPS can reward you with a well of honey.
Top-12 most common lean principles
It has become extremely popular for companies in any business to pursue the principles of lean production, Six Sigma, TQM, TPM etc. A new development in recent years is that multinational companies develop global and group-wide systems for process improvement based on all these concepts: The XPS. Then, what are the top XPS/lean principles in use?
Public transportation that works: The Curitiba Case
Cities all over the world strive to improve their public transport system. The benefits of a faster, more reliable and more effective bus transportation system is obvious; both to users and the environment. Why is public transport then often so extremely badly planned, expensive and unreliable? Curitiba in Southern Brazil offers their solution to the challenge. In fact, in such a way that the city is well-known to city planners worldwide. What has Curitiba done?
ZipCar: Car sharing for the future
I have two Volvo S40, two BMW 328xi, a Toyota Tacoma Pickup, a Cooper Mini, a Mazda 3, a KIA Soul, and a Ford Escape in my garage. Best of all; I pay less that $20 a year to get access all of them as much as I want. They get washed and cleaned, and I never bother about repairs or maintenance. I pay for use and don’t even worry about gas prices or toll stations. I’m a Zipster by ZipCar. You can be one too!
My car this weekend – Volvo S40 from ZipCar (c)tnetland
People at the wheel: Succeeding with lean in mass-customised manufacturing
[This post is an excerpt from my article “People at the wheel – Volvo’s lean journey” co-authored with Ebly Sanchez at Volvo, and freshly published in the Lean Management Journal.]
Copper Fox Distillery: Yummy micro-brewed American whiskey
Yes, I gladly admit; I enjoy a good whiskey. That’s also why it was such a great pleasure to get a first-hand insight into whiskey production at the small family-driven Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville, Virginia, yesterday. This distillery is the result of a man following his dream and capitalizing on its hometown’s strength in quality apple trees. His small-batch, hand-made whiskey differs from others as the first applewood chip-aged whiskey in the world. I’ve been to large distilleries and breweries earlier, but for us who know whiskey largely as end-consumers, a micro-distillery offers the opportunity to study and learn the processes far better than the giants.
How pleasant to breathe in the angle’s share of Copper Fox Distillery…
First learning point in the Year of the Dragon
Watching the Chinese New Year Parade and Festival in Washington DC today, I left with a positive experience and the following learning point:
Starbucks: Shoot for the stars, earn a lot of bucks
Starbucks Coffee Company: A success story unprecedented. Out of Seattle, WA, grew the largest coffee shop chain the world has ever seen. Today it has more than 12.500 coffee shops in the US. The international expansion started with a shop in Tokyo in 1996. In 2012 it has more than 17,000 stores in 55 countries. That’s 5000 more shops than Burger King and half of McDonald’s number; this is even more impressive knowing that most Starbucks shops are owned by it and not franchised (!). In these days, Norway gets its first Starbucks shop as it opens at Gardermoen Oslo Airport [1] (though, Starbucks coffee could have been bought in Norwegian retail markets since February 2011). These people sell coffee. Coffee! What kind of operational principles can turn such an every-day product into a billion dollar company?
Let Freedom Ring
Yesterday, Barack and Michelle Obama spent the evening like I did; attending the Georgetown University’s amazing “Let Freedom Ring” concert in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Kennedy Center.
Team up for lean: How to achieve lean transformation in SMEs
Lean has become the most popular production paradigm in the 21st century. While some giant companies boldly claim to have reached the “Lean nirvana”, many smaller companies have a much tougher road to the goal. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack the competence, the resources, and the stability to sufficiently set out on the lean journey. On the other hand, because of their size, SMEs might be much quicker to shift perspectives and march together in new directions. The challenge is to succeed in doing so. Here follows a promising roadmap for SMEs that want to become lean.
Ben & Jerry’s: Top 14 ice creams from a peculiar company
OK, I gladly admit; this post is more a fun post than a discipline post in operations management… Just like the products from Ben & Jerry’s are much more fun than many other manufactured products. Here’s my list of 14 favorites (yes, they are all favorites). Which is yours?
Photo: Ben & Jerry’s pints of fun: No. 9, No. 11 and No. 5 of 14 tested flavors
Philadelphia – once the workshop of the world
A magnificent city skyline arises behind a white wall of damp from factory pipes as we drive into Philadelphia. Factories, ship yards and terminals as far as the eye can see. Still, it soon becomes clear that many pipes stand tall but idle; no white damp escapes them anymore. Philly – once named “the Workshop of the World” [1,2] – is standing in a rising shadow of its closed down factories. Why?
Forget about your costs and focus on your margins for continued growth in a declining market
During the two last decades, and especially in the turbulent times we have today, cost reduction has been on top of any board-room agenda. Companies are obsessed with the cost focus, but not because they want to be; they know its wrong!