Firms that seek industry and professional specialization should temper their focus in some situations.
Filed under: Labor markets, Operations | Tagged: hiring, human resources, industry, profession, specialization, technical | Leave a Comment »
World-Class Operations Summarized
Posted on November 2, 2010 by tomkapostasy
There is synergy across the pillars of modern operations. Understanding variability, defining processes, building self-improving systems, using ideal long-term goals of zero waste, pursuing customer value, using pull production designs, empowering people and operating a single management system are mutually reinforcing components of world-class operations.
Filed under: leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: balanced scorecard, continuous process improvement, cost of quality, customer, empowerment, fail-safe, feedback, financial paradigm, forecast, inventory, JIT, kaizen, lean, lean manufacturing, management system, operations, processes, pull, push, quality, quality paradigm, re-engineering, self-improving systems, six sigma, supply chain management, unit of one, variability, visual management, waste, zero defects | Leave a Comment »
Managing the Tail in Operations and Product Development
Posted on October 3, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Managing the tail of operations processes is an increasingly important role for managers and analysts. Greater variety and consumer demand makes it ever more challenging to resolve issues or to know when to stop pursuing them. Teaching staff to understand the complementary roles of the financial and quality paradigms and providing them with best practices tools helps them to produce cost-effective results.
Filed under: leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: black swan, combinations, complexity, customer, diagnosis, finance paradigm, infinite, IT, modular, product development, project management, quality paradigm, ROI, six sigma, tail, unknown and unknowable, variability | Leave a Comment »
Tools for Managing the Tail
Posted on October 3, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Managers and analysts who develop and improve products, systems and processes increasingly manage activities in the tail of near-perfect delivery expectations and stunning complexity. In addition to understanding the finance and quality contexts of their functions, they can manage the tail by simplifying processes and problems, reducing goals and options, optimizing within constraints and monitoring non-critical activities.
Filed under: Operations, quality | Tagged: budget, complexity, diagnose, experts, fail-safe, finance, focused factory, goals, Goldratt, limits, modular, pareto, process, project, quality, scope, simplify, tail, tools, variability | Leave a Comment »
Creating Infinite Customer Value
Posted on September 20, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Great progress has been made by firms in achieving near ideal customer desires for quality, speed, flexibility, value, information costs and personal service.
Filed under: leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: balanced scrorecard, customer, flexibility, goals, information, ISO 9000, personal service, process, productivity. six sigma, quality, speed, value | Leave a Comment »
Talent Day
Posted on September 5, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Labor Day conjures up many misleading concepts of the past. It should be replaced by Talent Day to reflect the much greater contributions of human resources to the economy today.
Filed under: Labor markets, leadership, Operations, public policy | Tagged: class, communications, contracting, energy, factors of production, innovation, labor, Labor Day, outsourcing, productivity, quality, responsibility, risk, soft skills, specialization, talent, teamwork, words | Leave a Comment »
Functional Specialization
Posted on July 18, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Functional specialization may be the single most effective survival and progress strategy in the world.
Filed under: Finance, Operations, quality, strategy | Leave a Comment »
Functional Specialization Limits
Posted on July 18, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Functional specialization delivers great value, but is limited by a wide variety of offsetting costs and risks.
Filed under: Finance, Operations, quality, strategy | Leave a Comment »
Functional Specialization Conflicts
Posted on July 18, 2010 by tomkapostasy
Functional specialization generates countervailing forces.
Filed under: Finance, Operations, strategy | Tagged: conflicts, functional specialization, generalists, levels, operations, paradigms, situational leadership, specialists, strategy | Leave a Comment »
Functional Specialization Solutions
Posted on July 18, 2010 by tomkapostasy
The greatest net benefits of functional specialization can be reallized by using a set of generic strategies.
Filed under: Finance, leadership, Operations, quality, strategy | Tagged: alpha risk, beta risk, board governance, communications, finance, functional specialization, generalists, means-ends, paradigms, personality, planning, portfolio, processes, quality, situational leadership, specialists, supplier management, talents | Leave a Comment »
