Bain and Company recently published their Management & Tools 2007 Survey.  In that survey, both Lean and Six Sigma are included as part of the management tools used by companies.  What is interesting are the satisfaction rates of those tools, as reported by the executives that completed the survey. 

Below are some data collection heuristics:

In 1993, Bain launched a multi-year research project to get the facts about management tools and trends. Our objective is two-fold:

• To provide managers with information they need to identify and integrate tools that will improve bottom-line results

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Submit your Six Sigma questions and enter a chance to win Six Sigma Workbook For Dummies, an industry bestseller since its publication in 2005.  We are fortunate to have Craig Gygi, the lead author of Six Sigma for Dummies and the companion Six Sigma Workbook For Dummies to answer reader’s questions for this raffle.

To enter,

1. Submit your question for Craig in the comments of this post.
2. Comments will be turned off on June 8, 2007
3. We will enter all the commentators names on my handy-dandy randomizer, using a hard-to-crack random seed, and 5 randomly selected contestants will win a Six Sigma Workbook For Dummies book.

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The Toyota Production System makes effective use of visual cues to mark location in time and space, boundaries, and to answer the question "How am I doing" in a production setting.  Visual Cues are a simple but effective mechanism.

The assumption — and, what empirical evidence supports — is that we react automatically to objects and spaces that we encounter.  The picture below is taken from the book Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design — a highly recommended book:

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A pillar of Toyota is "Respect for People."  This concept is explained well in the Toyota Code of Conduct.  This is not new to students of Lean Manufacturing or The Toyota Production System.  Since joining eBay two weeks ago, I’m seeing some parallels between Toyota and eBay.  The main similarity is, indeed, Respect For People.

Toyota

Starting with Kiichiro Toyoda, he began the culture of respect for people and of building trust between labor and management, company and suppliers, and within the company of Toyota itself.  Below is content taken directly from Toyota:

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I’ve worked at a few companies since Amazon and, as time passes, I’m realizing how wise Jeff Bezos really is.  Despite the geeky perception, Jeff Bezos really was visionary in many, many ways.  Three ways in which I believe he was absolutely visionary is in his (1) focus on the customer, (2) in the product and software development practices at Amazon, (3) and in his insights on team dynamics and in team size.

Amazon is a company that is absolutely customer obsessed — from the top-down.  It has been able to build a culture with the customer at the center, because its processes, technology, and the general worldview of its employees are centered right on the customer. 

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More and more gas stations have television displays that play commercials and T.V. shows as you pump gas.  While the primary motivation for these firms is to increase brand awareness through commercialization and penetration, this entertain-while-you-wait is also a manifestation of Queueing Psychology.

There are a few key behavioral responses or reactions to queues, or waiting.  Below are the propositions for the Psychology of Queueing:

1. Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.
2. Process-waits feel longer than in-process waits.
3. Anxiety makes waits seem longer.
4. Uncertain waits seem longer than known, finite waits.

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My family and I are supporters of the Jacob’s Oven Project, which is a charity to help mothers and families in Africa become more self-reliant.  It’s a very cool project and my wife and I are helping.  We’ve donated an Oven and have called it "Preston", the name of our adopted child.  Also, any proceeds made on shmula.com go to support the Jacob’s Oven Project.  Oh, and my wife will be going to Africa to train the the women on how to use the Ovens — pretty exciting.

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I taught a class at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management during the Winter 2007 semester.  I taught a class on Operations and Supply Chain Management.  All in all, it was a decent experience.  I’ve taught before, but this time around was difficult.  Life is so busy now — with family, a day job, and then teaching on the side — it’s too much.  I’ll be taking a well-needed break and I’m going to just focus on my new career with eBay.  But, it was also difficult for another reason: I’m very dissappointed in the students’ over-emphasis on grades which, I believe, greatly impacts their ability to learn and, more importantly, their opportunity to let education shape their character and make them better human beings. 

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