FOREST CITY – Winnebago Industries hosted Lean strategy leader, Art Byrne, on Friday, April 19, 2013 as he presented to over 100 company leaders from nearly 40 companies in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Byrne is author of the new book The Lean Turnaround: How Business Leaders Use Lean Principles to Create Value and Transform Their Company. He is an expert on lean techniques and attitudes that enable CEOs and senior executives to create a culture for transforming a company and putting it on a high performance path. Winnebago Industries hosted the event in cooperation with the Iowa Lean Consortium.
Curries Co. went ISO for a couple of years. When Jerry Currie told the employees that Curries was doing away w/ISO, he said it was because Curries implemented ISO to attract new business, and since that didn’t happen, ISO would no longer be implemented. Another instance where the user had no idea of what the program was for. ISO was not a customer gaining program, rather it was to make the company put out a better product. It was a quality factor program. So as a result Curries discontinued ISO, down-sized their quality control staff, and went back to putting out what they had always put out. Enough said.
There is really only one concept needed, and that is Demming’s Statistical Process Control. If the process has an output, it can be measured.
All other concepts in my opinion are just copies of Demming’s (which are techniques of Shewart from Bell Labs) work dating back to WWII.
And I find it funny to remember what he told Ford’s quality people in 1981: “He told Ford that management actions were responsible for 85% of all problems in developing better cars.”.
And don’t get me started on why televisions are not made in the U.S. today.
@Observer-sorry-SPC is just part of the total process in lean. There are really about 13 disciplines if you implement the whole process. One of the main ones is ISO. Without the documentation of ISO you really have nothing else. That is why ISO is so big in Europe. You can not do business in Europe unless you are ISO certified.
@Anonymous-I spent a lot of years implementing lean and Kaizen manufacturing. I studied Demming and his ideas. The real idea behind lean is great. It is the elimination of waste and productivity improvement bu making workers jobs easier. It is tied in with several 12 other programs. The idea is you increase capacity so you can get more sales for the same amount of cost or less. And it is a great program. The problem is management just can’t keep themselves from violating the program Because they are all profit orientated and programmed as soon as they see a improvement and there is not a increase in sales they will lay off PEOPLE to get the savings they need and this drives a lot of money to the bottom line and they get their bonuses. The people who made it work for them get to go off and draw unemployment. I have seen it over and over again. There is a lot more to it as ISO needs to be implemented as part of the program and there are other disciplines as well.
Winnebago has been implementing lean manufacturing processes for at leat 15 years. My kid worked there in the mid 2000s and went to several trainings for his production line. Winnebago also gives financial incentives to employees who suggest ideas to reduce production costs and reifine the production process. Ithink there are a lot of people who need to learn what Lean practices really mean.
Here you go folks. Time to get ready for the workers to take it in the shorts. Lean means getting rid of those pesky hourly workers so management can get bigger bonuses and the stakeholders can make more profits. It never fails to get rid of people because that is the whole idea behind it. They will give a song and dance to the workers that it is to make their job easier and increase capacity and that is how it is supposed to work, but they will violate the principle and lay off people. It takes awhile but it will happen.