Management Improvement Carnival - December 2010

Kevin makes the case for single piece shopping at Evolving Excellence, but not everyone is biting in the comments section...me, I'm on the fence on this. JIT for purchasing makes sense for many, many things but probably shouldn't be applied blindly to all purchases...

Mike at Got Boondoggle? stresses the importance of genba observation in order to improving safety conditions while simultaneously introducing me to the Lean Safety blog and the new book of the same namesake. Whew! Nice hat trick Mike!

(For you TWI fans, a friendly reminder that the Job Safety manual is freely available for download in the public domain at the TWI Service website. The free, 111-page publication includes JS session outlines and conference leader manual. Keep in mind that JS is based on the Job Instruction training, an original source of training for the skill of direct genba-style observation.)


Speaking of safety, Mark Graban blogged about the half court football game played at Wrigley Field. Apparently, the administrators at Northwestern have never had the pleasurable genba experience of catching an over-the-shoulder-hail-mary as they were unknowingly running full speed across the warning track of their local high school baseball field into a chain link fence...ouch.

Mark Hamel at Gembatales warns us against the danger of serving two masters...I love the caricatures that he develops for the reader - spot on!

Finally a great take on muda, muri and mura by David Kasprzak at My Flexible Pencil. The way David applies the 3Ms to cultural behaviors is clever and thought provoking. Although seemingly "intangible" at first, the cultural wastes that David describes here soon emerge as the first logical target for attack, thereby allowing individuals in the organization to focus on building the ideal relationships so desperately needed to perform at the highest potential.