From the Lean Insider: Speaking to Toyota employees at the Detroit Auto Show President Watanabe asked that they take responsibility for recent quality problems.

"I do not regard the problem as something that suppliers are responsible for. We must work together so that we are fully aware of where suppliers are."

Bernstein closes saying, "At Toyota, they know that doing the best job of serving the customer is what makes the company profitable."

Brad Appleton reviewed Lean Project Management, by L Leach concluding, "I found Lean Project Management to be a fairly quick read providing a good overview of some TOC and CCPM fundamentals and how they align with Lean thinking."

We have another new blogger at RPM, Alan Mossman, Director of Lean Construction Institute UK. He trained as an architect and then worked as a socio-technical systems consultant. Returning to construction in 2000 he is co-editor of the Lean Construction Journal and from 2005-07 was Director of Constructing Excellence South West. Alan will be contributing articles every few weeks, or so. Please welcome him with your comments and questions.

When you're done reading the following post, head over to ChangeThis to vote on his manifesto proposal Together at the Workface: Improving Construction Logistics.

Hi. I’m Alan Mossman, a consultant based in the UK. Hal has invited me to contribute occasional posts to RPM in the areas of design, safety and collaboration.

One of my profs at Uni, Stafford Beer, asserted "A system is what a system does". So why would anyone create a system that in Hal’s words “turns strangers into enemies”.
Will Lichtig addressed this issue in an article for the Fall 07 American Institute of Architects Practice Management Digest. In Projects as Patients, Will suggests a scoring system for project health — should we call it the Lichtig Score? Four of the categories - Collaborative Planning, Reliable Promising, Unaccounted-for Constraints, Safety - have clear criteria.

The questions for the equally important fifth category, Mood, are not so straight-forward to answer:

• To what extent is the team positive?
• To what extent is honesty and trust evident?
• To what extent is the team learning and improving?
• Is morale improving, steady or declining?
• To what extent are team members being open and honest with each other?
• Are there barriers between trades and professions and if so How high are the silo walls?
• How long or short are tempers?
• To what extent are team members collaborating?

Read the rest of this entry ¶

In my first guest-blogger entry, I mentioned the importance of managing perceptions. I wrote that not doing so was the main cause of why only one project out of three was considered successful by major stakeholders, according to the Standish Group's Chaos Report¹. I concluded that "not managing perceptions" could be considered the 10th waste of ill-managed projects.

It is easy to say that we have to manage perceptions. But where and how should we start doing that? The Chaos Report gives us pretty good leads on that. The report identifies the involvement of end-users as the No.1 in its Top Ten List of project key success factors. I talked about that also when Hal gave me the opportunity to contribute a project e-tip back in 2003 (e-tip 016: Keep the Customer/End-User Involved). After all these years, this e-tip is still relevant and I propose to rename it The Proximity Principle and to revisit it as it pertains to fighting the 10th waste.

Read the rest of this entry ¶

1. www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/chaos-report.pdf [ ⇑ back ]