“Alex, I have come to the conclusion that productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive. Do you follow me?” “Yeah, but … really, Jonah, that’s just simple common sense,” I say to him. “It’s simple logic is what it is,” he says. We stop. I watch him hand his ticket across the counter. “But it’s too simplified,” I tell him. “It doesn’t tell me anything. I mean, if I’m moving toward my goal I’m productive and if I’m not, then I’m not productive—so what?” “What I’m telling you is, productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is,” he says. — 46: 691-698
stop and look at him. “What are we asking for? For the ability to answer three simple questions: ‘what to change?’, ‘what to change to?’, and ‘how to cause the change?’ Basically what we are asking for is the most fundamental abilities one would expect from a manager. Think about it. If a manager doesn’t know how to answer those three questions, is he or she entitled to be called manager?” — 407: 6234-6237
The rocks and water analogy of Lean is useful for understanding how this is done. The water level corresponds to the inventory level, while the rocks are the problems disturbing the flow. There are many rocks at the bottom of the river and it takes time and effort to remove them. The question is which rocks are important to remove. The answer is given by reducing the water level; those rocks which emerge above the water are the ones that should be removed. — 415: 6355-6358
What is obliterating the picture is that the end result of focusing on flow and ignoring local cost considerations is a much lower cost per unit. — 416: 6371-6372
Ohno’s approach in developing Lean demonstrates an important idea: there is a difference between an application and the fundamental concepts on which the application is based. The fundamental concepts are generic; the application is the translation of the concepts for a specific environment. As we have already seen, the translation is not trivial and necessitates a number of solution elements. — 417: 6382-6385
The bottleneck becomes the ‘drum beat’ for the orders, the ‘time buffer’ translates due-dates into release dates and the action of choking the release becomes the ‘rope’ that ties the order to the release of work. That is the reason this time-based application of the Theory of Constraints became known as the Drum-Buffer-Rope system or in short DBR. — 429: 6573-6576
“I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win-win solution. Shall I continue to count?” — 434: 6648-6651