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From the Editor

Welcome to the Superfactory Newsletter!

In this issue I've taken the editorial liberty to write both the Featured Article and the Featured Blog Post, which describe my observations while visiting various factories in Japan a few weeks ago. Start with Toyota Kyushu, but each of the companies demonstrated unique and rather incredible examples of excellence.

We have just added the new Lean Enterprise Series to our PowerPoint training product line, which includes lean accounting, lean supply chains, lean office, lean sales, lean leadership, lean and green, a lean assessment, and more.

Finally, the recent financial crisis has pretty much decimated the Superfactory 20 list of lean company stocks, although the average continues to do better than the S&P 500. We are working on a new and very powerful way to develop and monitor lean company stock portfolios, which we hope to launch by the end of the year. Stay tuned!

- Kevin Meyer

Manufacturing Excellence News

Stories of interest to the lean community.

• Lean on reliability
  Plant Services, IL - Nov 15, 2008
• Deliver on time, steel buyers tell suppliers
  Purchasing.com, MA - Nov 12, 2008
• Building a Heavy-Duty Supply Chain
  IndustryWeek - Nov 12, 2008
• White Marsh plant is model for reinventing auto industry
  Baltimore Sun, United States - Nov 12, 2008
• Boeing builds from ground up
  Puget Sound Business Journal, WA - Nov 11, 2008
• The Future of Kaizen at Toyota is Epic
  British Industry, UK - Nov 11, 2008
• Danaher ownership transforms Tektronix
  The Oregonian - OregonLive.com, OR - Nov 10, 2008
• Beyond Scrum: Lean and Kanban for Game Developers
  Gamasutra, CA - Nov 11, 2008
• Economic downturn could be a business opportunity
  Journal Times, WI - Nov 12, 2008
• Ontario's economic engine – the manufacturing sector – is idling
  Site Selection, Georgia - Nov 13, 2008
• Menasha Packaging continues to grow
  Appleton Post Crescent, USA - 10 hours ago

In the Blog

Join over 5,000 readers who get their daily dose of blunt manufacturing reality by subscribing to the Evolving Excellence blog!

NEW! Do you have a long flight to your far-flung factories? Now you can get all Evolving Excellence posts, comments, and sources from 2005 through 2008 in the form of six PDF e-books. The entire series is just $10, to offset our admin costs. Click here to purchase and download.

  |  Subscribe to Evolving Excellence by Email

Recent posts in the Evolving Excellence blog include:

• The Myopic Misfocus of Labor Time Standards - Taylorism is now out to destroy the retail industry.
• On the Road to Zimbabwe - The woes of the current economic crisis...
• Yes, Failure is an Option - The Detroit Three auto bailout...
• Shipping Water Across Water - Crystal Geyser's lesson in profitability.
• The Dilution of the Shingo Prize - New prizes for new sectors, levels, and geographic regions... when will it stop?
• Public vs. Private Company Managers - Is there a difference in mindset?
• WaPo Sees the Balloon - The Washington Post actually sees the downside of regulation.
• Feeding Generation Y - What your youngest employees expect in terms of feedback.
• Gotta Love Dov - Our favorite CEO, Dov Charney of American Apparel, is at it again.
• Toyota Knows Brains - They're not union, but Toyota is still paying its idle employees to come in... and get trained.

Visit the Evolving Excellence blog...

Also visit the new Lean Companies blog...

Upcoming Events

Featured Book

Real Lean - Volume 4
Learning the Craft of Lean Management

by Bob Emiliani

This fourth and final volume of the REAL LEAN series brings Lean full circle. It shows how Lean management is itself a craft that can only be learned as any other craftsman would learn their trade. Few people understand Lean management in the context of a craft, including the best Lean practitioners and Lean thinkers external to Toyota. This unique perspective creates a much clearer impression of what executives need to do in order to become Lean leaders. Their learning must be much deeper than they might have imagined, but the result will be much better than they would have expected.

Featured Article

Toyota Kyushu - The Manufacturing Ballet

By Kevin Meyer, Factory Strategies Group

I thought I understood lean pretty well. I was wrong. There is still so very much to learn.

On Monday I visited Toyota's Kyushu operations as part of Gemba's Japan Kaikaku Experience. The complex has the capacity to manufacture over 40,000 vehicles per month, did 430,000 vehicles in 2007, and is currently running at a 1,150 vehicle per day clip across two shifts. There are over 6,000 employees, which is down from a few months ago thanks to the global slowdown in vehicle sales, but up from only 2,000 less than a decade ago.

The first thing you notice as you drive up are the bright yellow "smoke" stacks. Why yellow? So they can easily see if the stacks are dirty in order to clean them. The last thing you experience as you leave the facility is the tour guide saying "I'm sure I could do a better job and I will endeavor to be better" and then watching her repeatedly bow to our bus as it drives off, punctuated by a final full bow as we round the corner out of the parking lot... a quarter mile away. The desire to improve and the respect for people is pervasive.

The experience between can be difficult to describe, but here goes with some free-flowing thoughts and observations.

This is Toyota's most profitable plant by a dollar/vehicle standpoint. It is not the best in terms of labor productivity. That simple fact should immediately throw some cold water on the "hours per unit" type metrics commonly used in multiple industries. More time not applied to work can lead to improvements in plant productivity that increase profitability. They understand that labor is a value, not a cost.

Read the entire article...

Featured Blog Post

Japan Kaikaku Experience - The Summary
by Kevin Meyer

I've received several requests to provide all of the links to posts on my recent Japan trip on one page, so here they are.  I still have a few more potential "lessons" posts bouncing around in my head, and if they see the light of day I'll add them to this page as well.

Factory Tour Reports

• Day 1: Toyota Kyushu (The Manufacturing Ballet)
• Day 2: Saishunkan Cosmetics (Customer Service Trumps a Factory)
• Day 3: TOTO Faucets (Cells, Cells, and More Cells)
• Day 4: Electronics contract manufacturer (5S Gone Wild)

Lessons From Japan

• Stand for Action
• Harmony, Chaos, & Ruthlessness
• The Speed of Change
• Rapid, Disciplined Problem Escalation

Implementing the Lessons

• The Stand Up Desk [Update 1]

Read more and comment...

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