Lean in Harley-Davidson: Launching the Harley-Davidson Operating System

July 21, 2012May 26, 2020 by T. Netland | 3 Comments

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)

The sun sets on REC (sometimes, no XPS in the world can retain your competitiveness)

June 10, 2012April 26, 2023 by T. Netland

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?

Top-12 most common lean principles

April 27, 2012May 26, 2020 by T. Netland | 4 Comments

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?

People at the wheel: Succeeding with lean in mass-customised manufacturing

March 6, 2012November 18, 2022 by T. Netland | 1 Comment

[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.]

Why lean is losing it’s mojo (but not it’s significance)

November 19, 2011October 2, 2018 by T. Netland | 9 Comments

The last 3 years we have seen a renewed explosion in the industrial interest on lean. Ignited by the two waves of economic downturns since 2008 and fueled by consultancy and lean missionaries, literally every business are now going lean. The shared aim is reducing costs and improving customer service by “working smarter not harder”. Today we have “lean services”, “lean construction”, “lean in the office”, “lean healthcare”, “lean ship-building”, “lean logistics, “lean management” and lean this and that… As lean disseminates from its origin in the automobile industry to services and the public sector, I see the word “lean” growing far beyond its roots and often even intentions. For me the term is losing it’s mojo.