Monthly Archives: August 2008

Toyota Winglet – Personal Transportation Assistance

Toyota has a long term vision. The population of Japan is aging rapidly. Toyota has invested in personal transportation and personal robotic assistance for quite some time. I must admit this new Winglet doesn’t seem like an incredible breakthrough to … Continue reading

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Individual Bonuses Are Bad Management

Gojko Adzic provides a nice post on Mary Poppendieck’s presentation at Agile 2008 on bonus, compensation and motivation: Paying programmers: are bonuses bad and what to do about it? In software development, it is very hard to establish the effects … Continue reading

Posted in Competition, IT, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How to Develop Thinking People

Toyota’s Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People [broken link was removed] Hayashi says, “Developing people requires physical endurance.” Frequent follow up is necessary, in person. It is not acceptable to give an assignment and follow up or scold … Continue reading

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India Lean Management

India’s Economic Times has an interview with James Womack, Now is the time for lean management, with an interesting quote: When I last visited India in 2002, I looked carefully at several operations of the TVS group in the Chennai … Continue reading

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Management Improvement Carnival #40

Mark Graban is hosting the Management Improvement Carnival #40. Mark recently authored a new book, Lean Hospitals. Health care highlights from this carnival include: Hospital Error – Heparin in the news again (The Lean Thinker Blog): “I am reasonably certain … Continue reading

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Multitasking Decreases Productivity

The problems with multitasking are becoming more and more well know, thankfully. Here is another article on the lower productivity multitasking produces – Multitasking Madness Decreases Productivity [the broken link was removed] by Barbara Bartlein: In a recent study by … Continue reading

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Science | Tagged , , | 2 Comments