Managing Automation - December 2007 - (Page 8) 12-07 MAILBOX Managing Automation Contact Info Managing Automation 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001 Fax: 212-629-1559 e-mail: dbrousell@ thomaspublishing.com LEANING INTO CHANGE To the editor, LEAN AND MEAN? One reader describes some of the cultural changes that must take place for a successful companywide shift to lean. Other readers look at China’s recent quality foul-ups in light of corporate morality or competitive smarts. Managing Automation is interested in hearing your views on manufacturing and the articles and columns in the magazine. Send e-mail to Dbrousell@thomaspublishing .com or mail to 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001. MA reserves the right to edit letters for clarify and length. maonline managingautomation.com To read David Brousell’s Take 1 columns, visit: ❑ Blocking and Tackling www.managingautomation.com /takeone39 To read Joshua Greenbaum’s column, visit: ❑ Regulate This www.managingautomation.com /notes42 I agree that small wins are what really drive the lean movement in companies (“Blocking and Tackling,” Take 1, September 2007, p. 6). However, it takes a while to get there. One of the best things about lean is the cultural change that comes about when the “light finally comes on.” As you know, when lean is first introduced in a company, there is a lot of skepticism and fear, especially from the middle managers. Lean asks them to give up their command-andcontrol nature — something they have been used to for many years. I believe that for a lean program to work, after the top management has bought into the concept, the culture of the middle manager must be changed. These are the people who will lead the lean changes. Their willingness to allow the worker to make changes will determine how successful a company’s lean program will be. Once they see the benefits that lean can bring them, the rest is mechanics. They get charged up and their enthusiasm passes to the workforce. And once the culture of the workforce changes, hold on to your potatoes, Dr. Jones, because you’re in for the ride of your life. Another driver of the lean program is the willingness of the financial people to take a leap of faith when a company is beginning the lean journey. Although we know lean does wonders for a company’s finances, the finance group is usually mired in traditional accounting practices. If the company is shareholderowned, it’s even worse. Traditional metrics are based on batch and queue manufacturing. Two of the worst are labor efficiency and machine utilization. Both drive companies to overproduce and build unneeded inventory, magnifying all of the seven wastes that lean works to eliminate. Embracing the new lean metrics is a challenge for the financial group, but once they are able to marry traditional and lean metrics, they become a formidable force on the side of lean implementation. Woods P. Till Lean Enterprise Manager, Weber Metals, Inc. and support positions that none of us, as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, or grandparents, would ever make. The closer one is to being the 24/7 executive, the more distorted the view of the world. As the company replaces the rest of the world, executives make some immoral — and sometimes outright illegal or even deadly — decisions, such as those made by the Chinese companies that the Americans trusted (but did not verify). This lack of morality in business decisions at the fringe — or in the lead content of children’s toys — needs to be shouted far and wide, while the iron is hot. Fredrick P. Wilson Grand Blanc, MI CAPITALISM’S DARK SIDE To the editor, CHINA TO GET THE LEAD OUT To the editor, I applaud your “Regulate This” column (Notes, September 2007, p. 18). As a businessman, I have cringed when my own company has made questionable quality decisions that could make our product unwelcome by the end customer. None of those decisions even came close to how unbridled, unregulated, and unmonitored non-American (Chinese, in this case) companies can act, free of any retribution other than caveat emptor. Unbridled capitalism has always had a dark side, such as the toxic dumps in New Jersey and elsewhere, and otherwise-normal men are driven to make decisions Given the ability of the Chinese (PRC) to overcome the depth of the “cultural revolution” to become the fastest-growing nation of the world, I would not be surprised if China learns from this experience and, within five or 10 years, its products are among the best in quality in the world (“Regulate This,” Notes, September 2007, p. 18). Are we up to that competition? There is one solution: that their people make as much money as ours do. Then their products will no longer be lowpriced and the people will demand products we make and services we provide. Carlos W. Moreno CEO and founder, Ultramax Corp. 8 December 2007 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=6 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=6 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=6 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=18 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=18 http://managingautomation.com http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=18 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=18 http://www.managingautomation.com/takeone39 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/thomas/ma0907/index.php?startpage=18 http://www.managingautomation.com/notes42
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