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Earth Quake

25 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The cause of the recent eruption in Iceland was scantily dressed women. According to Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi a senior Iranian cleric (but not an operations analyst) “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes”. Yesterday (Monday 26th April) an […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: clarity, dogmatism, measurement, root cause analysis

Focus

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

If you want to be good at something you need to focus, that is obvious.  But how much of a difference does it make?  Take the Aravind eye hospital in India. It was founded in 1976 by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy.  He had one aim, “to eradicate needless blindness”. In 2009 it treated 2.75 million patients […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: Aravind Eye Hospital, clarity, good service, purpose

You Clever Rat

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Have a good look at the picture below, can you see the pattern?  What is going to happen next?  Red or Green?  Left or Right?  Write down the answer (no cheating). An experiment was carried out in the USA (See the link).  A rat was put at the foot of a T shaped maze and […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: process control, process noise

Looking for Junk

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Here is a contentious statement for you. “Manufacturing operations are better run than Service operations”. Why do I think that? Is it because the manufacturing guys are cleverer? Is it because operations are more important in manufacturing? Is it because service operations are harder to run? I doubt any of those are true.  I think […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: clarity, manufacturing, video, visual management

Jargon du Jour

12 April, 2010 by James Lawther 2 Comments

I love management jargon.  I found this today and believe me, you need one: “an oobeya room” An oobeya room is a large room specifically set up to run a project from.  As you enter the room it contains: 1.  The objective 2.  A representation of the expected output (a graphic or model so everybody […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: clarity, communication, jargon, oobeya room

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