Reprise: Lean & the Non-Profits?

By Pascal Dennis

Charity is a fundamental virtue.

We have to help those entangled in the 'web of circumstance'.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

More and more, I like to give of myself, my time and effort.

It's concrete, and NGOs & non-profits are in dire need of Lean support.

Are they not swimming in waste?

Over-processing, defects & delay are perhaps the most obvious.

For example, I've donated annually to a well-known children's charity.

Yet they continually send me, at high cost, the same bulk mail, even after I wrote and asked them not to.

Over-processing and defect waste, no?

I'm passionate about helping people with disabilities, and have offered to help half a dozen agencies involved in such work.

Only one has bothered to respond and the message was, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

Are NGO's and Non-Profits not interested in running better?

Sadly, the message seems to be: "Just send us your money. We'll figure out how to spend it."

Sorry, you'll figure out how to waste it...

(Am I becoming cynical?)

Like any organization, NGO's and Non-Profits have a purpose, customers and processes.

Why shouldn't they be as effective as Apple, Amazon, Toyota, GE or any great organization?

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Manufacturing & Democracy

By Pascal dennis

Over the past twenty years, an array of pundits has preached the virtues of off-shoring.

Company after company moved their machines & factories to low cost, off-shore regions.

We buffer the inevitable variation with capacity, inventory & lead time.

Scores of engineers & specialists fly business class, month after month the fix thorny, expensive & chronic problems.

Now the pull of low-wage countries is weakening. According to The Economist, nearly two-fifths of major US firms interviewed said they were either planning to move or thinking about moving production facilities back home.

Jeff Immelt, GE CEO, calls outsourcing “yesterday’s model” & has returned production of fridges, washing machines and heaters back to Kentucky.

An encouraging trend.

When you offshore your plant & equipment, you forget how to make things.

You lose the ability to design, cut, shape & assemble metal - (or plastic, or composites, or silicon or electrons).

Or the ability to put engineers, designers, sales & manufacturing people in the same room, so they can monkey around with prototypes, brainstorm & come up with something splendid & unexpected.

Worst of all, you begin to lose the middle class jobs upon which democracy depends.

Making stuff is fun, good for the soul, and pays well.

It's also a cornerstone of democracy.

Best,

Pascal

Economies I & II

By Pascal Dennis

Great piece in the NY Times recently by John Brooks.

Brooks comes up with a helpful formulation: Economy I & II

The former comprises private sector companies like Apple, Amazon, Toyota and GE.

These companies face withering competition every day.

As a result, they're wonderful at creating value, but not so good at creating jobs.

Economy II, by contrast, comprises government and quasi-government organizations like schools, universities and hospitals.

These organizations face comparatively little competition (or in the case of government agencies, none at all.)

As a result, they're wasteful and inefficient -- but good at creating 'jobs', of a sort.

Lean thinkers will argue that a job by definition is an activity that creates value for a customer.

Seen in this light, is a job in a suffocating bureaucracy that serves no one, truly a job?

I don't want to be misunderstood. Economy II is full of smart dedicated people who work hard and want to do the right thing.

They deserve what Deming called the 'pride of workman ship'.

They deserve to be involved in managing and designing their work. Given the opportunity, I've found they're very good at it.

The bigger problem is that Economy I organizations are no longer able to pay for Economy II.

As a result Economy II is bankrupting the state. Seen in this light, Greece is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Wither thou goest, go I.

Most western economies will hit the same wall before long.

What to do?

More next time.

Best,

Pascal

Lean & the Non-Profits?

By Pascal Dennis

Charity is a fundamental virtue.

We have to help those entangled in the 'web of circumstance'.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

More and more, I like to give of myself, my time and effort.

It's concrete, and NGOs & non-profits are in dire need of Lean support.

Are they not swimming in waste?

Over-processing, defects & delay are perhaps the most obvious.

For example, I've donated annually to a well-known children's charity.

Yet they continually send me, at high cost, the same bulk mail, even after I wrote and asked them not to.

Over-processing and defect waste, no?

I'm passionate about helping people with disabilities, and have offered to help half a dozen agencies involved in such work.

Only one has bothered to respond and the message was, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

Are NGO's and Non-Profits not interested in running better?

Sadly, the message seems to be: "Just send us your money. We'll figure out how to spend it."

Sorry, you'll figure out how to waste it...

(Am I becoming cynical?)

Like any organization, NGO's and Non-Profits have a purpose, customers and processes.

Why shouldn't they be as effective as Apple, Amazon, Toyota, GE or any great organization?

Best,

Pascal