Management Improvement Carnival – The Best of 2008

John Hunter at Curious Cat has
asked several of us to help co-host part of a larger scale Management Carnival
Best of 2008 series where several bloggers are joining to recap the
best posts from multiple lean or management improvement blogs this past
year. The breath and quality of improvement information is rather incredible.

Check out the full list who have recapped several of their own favorite blogs

I'm going to do my best to select some of the best posts from the following blogs: LSS Academy, Got Boondoggle, Edge Perspectives and Work Matters.  So off we go!

From LSS Academy:

• Eight Reasons Your Lean / Six Sigma Initiative Could Fail – The dangers of using the wrong metrics and the wrong motives.
• One Piece Flow versus Mass Production – Ron creates a great video showing how one piece flow trumps batch production.
• Leadership Lessons from The Cheesecake Factory – the gemba, any gemba, can teach many lessons.
• Womack's "Lean" versus Ohno's "TPS" – Yes the new "lean" terminology can be a bit confusing when trying to map it back to original Toyota "TPS".
• Value Stream Mapping Overview – a series of posts detailing how to do VSM right.

From Got Boondoggle

• My CI – a great visual method to create and demonstrate individual continuous improvement projects.  Followed by…
• Top 12 FAQ About My CI – follow up information on how to create and implement this method.
• How do we Sustain Kaizen Results? – The kaizen is often the easy part; sustaining the results depends on the quality of the follow-up activities.
• Thinking Outside the Wooden Pallet – Have you ever considered how much waste is created by your forklifts?
• Master of the Obvious – Have you learned so much, been trained so well, obtained so many "belts"… that you miss the obvious right in front of you?

From Edge Perspectives

• Innovation on the Edge – Value and competitive advantage are created at the edge… places of potential and friction, where traditional products
  and practices are no longer adequate to address unmet needs or
  unexploited potential.
• Stupidity and the Internet – Is the internet making us stupid through its use of short twitteresque posts instead of in-depth analyses?
• The Bigger Consequences of the Big Sort – Similar to the above, do online communities create narrow viewpoints instead of the diversity forced by physical community interaction?
• Shaping Strategies – The opportunities created by developing strategy instead of simply adapting to changing conditions.
• Exploring New Forms of Economic Leverage – Most firms leverage their financial prowess.  But what about their capability and learning advantages?

From Work Matters

• Great Customer Service Story at Timbuk2 – How erring on the side of trusting people and believing that good things will happen, everyone is elevated.
• Leader's Apologies: Doing it the Right Way – Careers, business success, and customer service all improve if mistakes are recognized and apologized for… correctly.
• Another Asshole Infested Hospital – As if healthcare didn't have enough problems already.
• Dr. Giuliano's Ten Commandments for Minimizing Medical Errors – Continuing the topic of healthcare, but with a lesson for the rest of us.
• Leadership vs. Management: An Accurate But Dangerous Distinction? – The danger of just managing… and the danger of just focusing on big ideas.