Leadership, Culture and the Situation of Marissa Mayer
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, sent a shock wave across the internet and the blogosphere recently when she announced that Yahoo’s policy of allowing people to work remotely would be ended, and that remote-working employees would need to begin reporting to the office by June 2013. The debate has raged over the wisdom of the move, with a heaping…
Don’t Manage Factories; Design Them to Run “Autonomously”
Imagine this scenario: A customer gives us an order, the factory produces the products, and the order ships, autonomously, without any management intervention. No meetings, no expedites, no shifting priorities, no direction setting. Like turning a key to start your car engine, it just happens. Sound like a dream? It’s not. Many companies have achieved a…
Innovation Insight: 3-D Printing
I have lived in an age where technology advances have been rather amazing and certainly life-changing for the vast majority of persons on the planet. I have witnessed: the birth of manned space-flight culminating with sending men to the moon and returning safely back to Earth; trans/inter-continental flights becoming routine; the birth of the personal computer…
ERP Optimization for Lean Excellence
Companies today must do business in a fiercely competitive global environment. In order to be a significant player in this arena, organizations must employ new technologies and techniques at a velocity that may challenge the very fiber of a company. They will be required to establish seamless integration from their customers, internally into manufacturing and out…
Customer Focused Continuous Improvement – Beyond Words; Part 2 – Customer Need
We started our discussion on Customer Focus last month with a general discussion about what it means to be ‘customer focused’, and how this term is overused and misunderstood in business. Everyone claims to be ‘customer focused’, yet customer loyalty is at its lowest point in years, complaints are higher than ever before, and almost everything…
Training and Education – What is the correct value for you?
As Continuous Improvement practitioners, it is natural (even a passion) to always seek ways to improve ourselves and the value we drive to our colleagues and the companies for which we work. During our quest for this personal and professional development, sometimes we know precisely which areas we wish to improve our skillsets and where we…