The sun sets on REC (sometimes, no XPS in the world can retain your...
The Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) has recently closed its second of two factories in its home country Norway. All the state-of-the-art technology and lean improvement initiatives in the world...
View ArticleLean in Harley-Davidson: Launching the Harley-Davidson Operating System
Harley-Davidson! …no need for more introduction. This week, I toured the assembly plant in York—the biggest of four H-D manufacturing plants in the US. Together with H-D tattooed bikers with close-fit...
View ArticleNissan Production Way: A better alternative to TPS?
I have visited three former Nissan Diesel factories in Japan this week (today owned by a foreign multinational). The plants operate according to the Nissan Diesel Production System—a bi-product of the...
View ArticleApplying Program Management Theory to XPS
This post is an excerpt of my newly published paper ”Managing strategic improvement programs: the XPS program management framework”, published in the peer-reviewed and open-access Journal of Project,...
View ArticleWaving the Swedish flag in the Manufacturing World Cup
The winter sport season has barely started as Norway’s victorious skier, Petter Northug, kicks off his mockery season of our neighbor to the east: Sweden. A few days ago, in the Cross Country World Cup...
View ArticleWhy my mother drives a Toyota: The Toyota Production System
My mother just got her new car. After driving a problematic Renault for many years, she decided to go for a Toyota Yaris. That’s an excellent choice for her needs. Despite Toyota’s recent recalls, it...
View ArticleKudos to the quality gurus
What do the quality gurus of the 80s think when they read the modern literature on lean & co? Have we moved beyond their original ideas? Or do we just say the same things using fancy, new words?...
View ArticleCompany-wide Quality Management: XPS of the 80s
When it comes to quality management, there are surprising similarities between what was suggested in the 80s and what we barely have seen the start of in industry today. In this post, I discuss how...
View ArticleIs Lean Six Sigma relevant for the 21st Century Manufacturing?
A report from POMS 2013 in Denver Are Lean and Six Sigma relevant for the 21st Century Manufacturing? An answer to this—and thousand other questions—is being suggested at the annual POMS Conference in...
View ArticleThe World Class Manufacturing programme at Chrysler, Fiat & Co.
The company-specific production system (XPS) of Chrysler is the World Class Manufacturing (WCM) concept, developed by the Fiat Group in 2006. But, what exactly is the WCM? And, what does Chrysler see...
View ArticleFactory Fitness: What managers can learn from Athletics
This week, the 2013 IAAF World Championships in athletics is held in Moscow, Russia. If plant managers watch carefully, they might pick up a few ideas for improving their factories. A specific concept...
View ArticleGo Lean, get Green?
Good news*: your operations can reach excellence in both Lean and Green. But to hope for success you need to treat Lean and Green as interconnected strategies—not isolated projects. That tip is a key...
View ArticleA gold standard lean production system: the Madshus Business System
It is Winter Olympics in Sochi. The world’s best winter sport athletes use world-class winter sport equipment to fight for honor and gold. Just like the athletes use exercise regimens to become...
View ArticleDo Lean Programs Pay Off?
Multinational companies roll out lean programs or XPSs. The objective is to improve the operational performance of all the factories in the global network. The party killer? It is documented that about...
View ArticleImplementing the Volvo Production System in a truck plant
To follow up my previous post about the effect of implementing lean in the global Volvo Group, here’s one short story of the implementation of the Volvo Production System (VPS) in the truck assembly...
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