Thanks to a couple of our posts being linked to from the Canadian Army website, we’ve received over 1,000 visitors in just the last hour. Welcome to our blog covering manufacturing and enterprise excellence topics! Enterprise excellence also often includes the military, so I invite you to poke around a bit. Below are just a few of our posts on excellence in the military:
- Toyota Optimizes Military Supply Chains
- Perhaps the Military Should Invade Detroit
- The Air Force Drives Lean Healthcare
- General Pillsbury for Manufacturing Czar
Our friends at the Lean Blog and Gemba Panta Rei have also discussed military excellence. Take some time to look around!
rob thompson says
There is a real need for the military to adopt a Lean philosophy. For example, “US probes troops’ neglect claims: Washington has ordered a review of the way wounded US soldiers are cared for at military hospitals, following highly critical reports in the US media” http://tinyurl.com/22xacu
In this post (http://tinyurl.com/36mlxk) on one of my blogs I make the following points:
1. There is no substitute for direct observation: Many western employees try to solve problems by thinking about the problem and devising hypotheses that can can checked. Toyota gets their employees to recognise the importance of direct observation.
2. Managers should coach, not fix: Each worker looks for ways to improve the process, and the manager’s role becomes one of involving the team in identifying the problems and not doing all the work himself
Lean teaches us to “go see” (the concept of “genchi genbutsu) and Deming wanted us to work in companies which are free of fear, so that problems we do not see (or cannot see) are brought to our attention by those who can see.
If only these principles were applied in this terrible case!
Rob
jimi says
There is no Soviet Union anymore, but everybody remember those great victories and defeats. We trusted in idea and we made our history through great losses… http://backinussr.com/
John Hunter says
Thomas P.M. Barnett has some great insights in the dynamics of the global economic, political, military future:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
On the topic of management improvement concepts applied to the defense department here is some excellent material from the US Navy
http://quality.disa.mil/library/ListTools.cfm