Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Eiji Toyoda - Former Chairman Toyota Motors



Eiji Toyoda, was  a member of Toyota Motor’s founding family and an architect of its “lean manufacturing” method. He helped to turn the automaker into a global powerhouse and changed the face of modern manufacturing.

Mr. Toyoda was born on Sept. 12, 1913, near Nagoya in central Japan, the second son of Heikichi and Nao Toyoda. He spent much of his youth at his family’s textile mill.  He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1936 with a mechanical engineering degree and joined his family’s loom business.

The next year, Kiichiro Toyoda, son of the founder, created Toyota Motor, taking the young Eiji Toyoda with him.

Assigned to a division devoted to resolving quality problems, Mr. Toyoda is said to have developed an uncanny ability to spot waste and eliminate it. He used to say,  “Whether you pick a up a problem and solve it or not is a matter of habit. If you have the habit, then you can do whatever you have a mind to.”

In 1950, he set out on what would turn out to be a pivotal three-month tour to survey Ford’s Rouge plant in Detroit, then the largest and most efficient factory in the world. By 1950, Toyota had produced just 2,685 automobiles, compared with the 7,000 vehicles the Rouge plant was rolling out in a single day

Mr. Toyoda wrote back to headquarters that he “thought there were some possibilities to improve the production system.” He brought back a thick booklet that outlined some of Ford’s quality-control methods; the company translated it into Japanese. Mr. Toyoda went on to oversee Toyota’s Motomachi plant, a huge undertaking that gave the automaker the capacity to produce 5,000 passenger vehicles a month at a time when all of Japan produced about 7,000 vehicles a month. The plant, completed in 1959, was soon running at full capacity and gave Toyota a decisive lead over its domestic rival Nissan and the confidence to turn its eyes overseas.

He died on 17 September 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/business/global/eiji-toyoda-promoter-of-toyota-way-dies-at-100.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323981304579080842742449138.html

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Big Data - Successful Management Applications




Locating Promising Gold Mines  - 2000

Goldcorp was once a struggling mining business.  With the business in jeopardy and frustrated by the lack of progress, CEO Rob McEwan decided to do something truly revolutionary.

In  the Goldcorp Challenge, he took 400 MB of proprietary data, put it online and offered $575,000 in prizes for anybody who could locate promising seams.  More than 1,400 contestants identified 110 new targets, 80% of which resulted in substantial new discoveries of gold.

More about the Goldcorp Challenge
http://www.fastcompany.com/44917/he-struck-gold-net-really

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/09/13/confused-about-big-data-here-are-5-things-you-need-to-do/2/


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

10 September - Knowledge History - Science, Engineering and Management



1898 - Waldo Semon - invented vinyl

Arthur Holly Compton born 1892: cosmic rays and X-rays; Compton scattering; Nobel prize in Physics, 1927
John Kidd born 1775: codiscoverer of naphthalene in coal tar; author of 1833 treatise "On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man", intended to show how God was manifest in creation.

Carl Mosander born 1797: discovery of erbium (Er, element 68), lanthanum (La, 57), terbium (Tb, 65); discovered "didymium" (later resolved into neodymium and praseodymium)

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/september.html


Knowledge History of the Day - Index for the Year

Management Theory Review Blog
Management Knowledge Center
Engineering and Technology Knowledge Center
Science Knowledge Center
Social Science Knowledge Center

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Supply Chain Performance - Effectiveness and Efficiency



Supply Chain Design and Analysis: Models and Methods
Benita M. Beamon
University of Washington
Industrial Engineering
International Journal of Production Economics (1998)
Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 281-294

Exploring efficiency and effectiveness in the supply chain: A conceptual analysis
Benedikte Borgström
Jönköping International Business School

A framework for supply chain performance measurement
A. Gunasekarana,, C. Patelb, Ronald E. McGaugheyc
Int. J. Production Economics 87 (2004) 333–347

A SCOR Reference Model of the Supply Chain
Management System in an Enterprise
Danish Irfan,  Xu Xiaofei, and Deng Sheng Chun1
The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 5, No. 3, July 2008

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Leaders must foster accountability, but they also have to forgive errors, mistakes and wrongs of followers and opponents



Rosabeth Moss Kanter expressed the important idea in a HBR blog post.

Instead of settling scores,  leaders have to make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and involve all to get on with business. This is essential for turnarounds or to prevent mergers from turning into rebellions against acquirers who act like conquering armies. Forgiveness can sometimes mean investing in groups that have done something negative — a counterintuitive but often very effective strategy.

"Revenge is not justice," says General Douglas MacArthur, as played by Tommy Lee Jones in Emperor, an engrossing new feature film about the surrender of the Japanese to American troops at the end of World War II.

Emperor - Trailer
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 The question requiring leadership judgment is whether to hang Japan's Emperor Hirohito for war crimes. Despite pressure from Washington and his fellow officers  General MacArthur senses that Japan reveres its emperor and refuses to give in. He instead uses his power for reconciliation and the emperor remains in place, though stripped of his divinity.  As we know from history, the rebuilding of war-torn Japan was an economic and social triumph.

If revenge is not justice, it is not strategy either.

Anger and blame are unproductive emotions that tie up energy in destroying rather than creating. People who want to save a marriage, for example, must let go of the desire to hurt a partner the way they think the partner has hurt them and instead make a gesture of reconciliation.

Those whose main motivation is to settle scores and get payback — to obstruct rather than construct — are on the wrong side of history. Their legacy is not  magnificent building, but rubble. Taking revenge can destroy countries, companies, and relationships. Forgiveness can rebuild them.

Source:
http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2013/02/great-leaders-know-when-to.html

Prof Kanter explain this point also in a video presentation - Six Key to Leading Positive Change

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Sunday, September 1, 2013

Evolution of Management Thought - Books and Research Papers





The Science and Practice of Management
A. Hamilton Church
1914
http://archive.org/stream/sciencepracticeo00chur#page/n9/mode/2up

The Regulating Principles or Laws of Effort
Practical Organization of The Organic Functions

Organizing Design
Organizing Equipment
Organizing Operation
Organizing Comparison
Organizing Control


Principles of Industrial Organization
Kimball Dexter S.
1919
http://archive.org/details/principlesofindu00kimbrich



The Principles of Industrial Management
John Duncan
1920
http://archive.org/details/principlesofindu00dunc


The Philosophy of Management
Oliver Sheldon
http://archive.org/details/philosophyofmana00sheluoft

Fayol's 14 Principles Then and Now
Carl A. Rodrigues
Management Decision, 2001, 39,10, Page 880

Management Mathematics



IMA Journal of Management Mathematics (IMA J Manag Math)
http://www.researchgate.net/journal/1471-6798_IMA_Journal_of_Management_Mathematics

Journal of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research
http://www.globalstf.org/common/journal-jmsor.html


Mathematics in Management
Course material
http://sgbau.ac.in/Quantitative-Methods.pdf