All in continuous improvement
Pointers to a couple case studies on process improvement from MIT and focusing on a division of Ford Motor Complany.
A week ago, the Sunday Boston Globe carried a piece on Eugene Litvak's work on helping hospitals improve. Flow is the key.
A colleague forwarded a copy of "Manage a Living system, Not a Ledger" by H. Thomas Johnson. It is a great discussion of why traditional financial measures, while required for accounting reporting, are terrible for internal decision making.
Problem statements aren’t always clear. Jon Miller provides a nice top 10 list of “problems with problem statements” and then I riff on that.
Kent Greenes writes "Learning fast to stay relevant in a flat world." It's a nice, brief description of the Lessons Learned process as practiced by the Army and as described in Learning to Fly. I also like the link Kent makes to the importance of learning and reflection.
The December 2005 Business 2.0 has an article about Dell's newest manufacturing facility that may reflect theory of constraints principles: "Dude, You're Getting a Dell--Every Five Seconds."
Pop quiz: Do you want a bottleneck in your business? Why or why not?
Michael McLaughlin writes "The Worst Thing About Best Practices." In isolation, I absolutely agree with McLaughlin. However, if they are part of an intelligent process, such as he suggests at the end of the article, best practices can be quite helpful.
John Parkinson, Chief Technologist for the Americas for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, spoke at the KMPro Chicago meeting last night on the topic of The Real Time Enterprise.