“gemba walk” (lean thinking term) to go to the actual place where value is added + “walkabout” (Australian aborigine) a short period of wandering bush life engaged as an occasional interruption of regular work
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I’ve learned a lot from reading the 5-book series “Real Lean” by Bob Emiliani. One interesting topic caught my attention in book #3, Chapter 1, “The Long Wave of the Current State”.
Some helpful quotes:
“Lean is not a bottom-up management system; it is top-down. If senior managers are not interested in lean management, then the company does not adopt lean management.”
“Historically, since the time of Scientific Management system and Ford’s flow production system to present-day Lean management, it has been very difficult to obtain executive buy-in.”
“Typically the president or CEO wants to improve profitability or suddenly, unexpectedly, faces cost problems. They will normally seek simple solutions and immediate results. To achieve this, they will hire consultants who can achieve what the boss wants, usually with little or no concern for employees who may lose their job or others who might be negatively impacted. Seventy-five years ago, these types of consultants were referred to disparagingly as “Bedaux consultants,” named after Charles Bedaux, a prominent industrial management consultant.”
“Charles Bedaux, and other consultants like him, focused narrowly on one thing: saving their client money. Consultants offering this narrow promise have been much more successful than those who proposed broad, fundamental changes to the management system to achieve both short- and long-term benefits.”
“The originators of the Scientific Management system were far less successful in their consulting than were the consultants who cherry-picked the system and applied the tools that offered the quickest cost savings and efficiency improvements.”
“The client company improved its operations and its profitability for a while, but would soon face another cycle of distress. Most top management since the 1890s seem quite content to face a crisis, fix it, face another crisis, fix it, face another crisis, fix it, and so on. This implies that there is virtually no interest among executives for fundamental changes in management practice.”
“There is no real marketplace demand for a new management system. But there is plenty of marketplace demand for quick fixes. Hence the great success of the “Bedaux consultants”.
No more “Bedaux consulting” for me
