A friend of mine makes chicken curry for a living, he makes a lot of it, in fact he makes 2 tonnes of it an hour, he could keep most of Birmingham fed. The problem is that when you make that much curry, invariably you drop some. Last year he threw away well over £1 […]
Complex Coffee
I came across this youtube video for Baileys Coffee and I started to wonder, do Baileys actually make any money out of it? How much does the extra complexity cost them. First there is the product complexity: extra labels, different flavours, extra SKU’s… Secondly there is process complexity: change overs, work arounds, reduced forecast accuracy… […]
What Can You See?
The manufacturing guys have a neat trick It is called an “Ohno circle”. They paint them on the floor at different points in factories and then the team leader stands in the circle with a clip board for 30 minutes, writing down everything that he can see that doesn’t work. He or she then spends […]
Spies Like Us
I have reached that age when for Christmas I am given socks, chocolates and paperbacks. I am half way through this year’s crop of paperbacks and found this quote in a John le Carre novel. “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world” I learnt the same lesson working in a […]