Each month new articles, book reviews, and other content are added to the Superfactory website. The new content is featured in the monthly e-newsletter which goes out to 50,000 subscribers worldwide, and we will also post a monthly heads-up on this blog.
New content in June includes:
The featured article is from Bob Emiliani and is titled Dark Days for Lean Management. The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire article here.
When do top executives adopt Lean management? Usually, it’s when times are tough. Why do top executives adopt Lean management? To reduce costs, improve profitability, and increase the stock price. This reasoning is totally incorrect and contributes to the many failed Lean transformations that we have witnessed over the last 30 years.
So when should management adopt Lean management and what is the right reason for doing so?
Executives should adopt Lean when times are good and not when times are bad, as they normally do. Adopting Lean management when times are bad is like cramming for a test in school the night before the test. You should have been studying all along, but instead procrastinated and failed to manage your responsibilities and meet your commitments.
The Featured Blog Post is our recent piece titled Different Approaches to a Truck Slowdown. The following is a brief excerpt, and you can read the entire post here.
And then there’s GM. I guess you could say they’re lucky… they have idle truck plants thanks to a strike, so they aren’t incurring major shutdown costs like Ford while still drying up excess supply. Or so you would think.
In a regulatory filing, GM said the 11-week strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. cut GM’s truck production by 230,000 vehicles in the second quarter. GM estimated that drop would lower its pretax earnings by $1.8 billion, and warned it won’t be able to make up that lost production later in the year because of slack truck demand.
Uhh… wait a minute. If demand is slack, why would you want to make up production? So the trucks can sit and tie up cash while depreciating and waiting for a fire sale? Yep, that’s a good strategy.
The featured book this month is Extreme Toyota by Emi Osono. The following is a brief summary, click here for more information.
To an outsider, Toyota is hard to understand. The company moves forward gradually while also advancing in big leaps. It is frugal with its resources while spending extravagantly on people and projects. It is both efficient and redundant; it cultivates an environment of stability and paranoia; it is hierarchical and bureaucratic, but encourages dissent; it demands that communication be simplified while building complex communication networks. These contradictions are rampant at Toyota because its culture and managers intentionally embrace contradiction, opposites, and paradox.
We continually update the other major sections of the website, including:
- PowerPoint Presentations: Over 50 downloadable PowerPoint presentations on lean manufacturing, quality, enterprise, and safety concepts.
- Factory Toolbox: Almost 300 downloadable forms, procedure templates, assessments, and tools to help you not reinvent the wheel.
- Events Calendar: a listing of lean excellence seminars, workshops, training, and conferences worldwide
- Topic Information: Summaries and resources on over 40 enterprise excellence topics.
- History of Excellence: A growing timeline of notable events that helped shape current-day enterprise excellence
- Online E-Learning Center: Fourteen interactive online presentations on the core concepts of lean manufacturing.
- Tools and Assessments: Downloadable assessment tools.
- Virtual Factory Tours: Web and streaming video tours of over 100 factories.
The Superfactory 20 list of companies with strong lean manufacturing programs was released, and the 
stock performance of each of those companies is being tracked individually and as a group versus the S&P500. Last year these companies outperformed the S&P500 by 20%… this year it isn’t quite as hot. Yet. Check out the list and performance, updated hourly.
For all you LinkedIn junkies, we have created a LinkedIn group for Superfactory. Join the group to
network with other Superfactory enthusiasts and to show our logo on your profile. If you haven’t explored LinkedIn, check it out to see why over 17 million professionals use it for networking.
We are always looking for new articles and other content. Contact us via the Superfactory website if you would like to contribute to our knowledge base.
