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The Toyota Way: A book review by Bob Morris

First Friday Book Synopsis

The Toyota Way Jeffrey Liker McGraw-Hill (2003) To understand Toyota’s success, first understand its DNA I read this book when it was first published in 2004 and recently re-read it, curious to know how well Jeffrey Liker’s explanation of Toyota’s management principles and lean production values have held up.

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Why American Management Rules the World

Harvard Business Review

After a decade of painstaking research, we have concluded that American firms are on average the best managed in the world. But while Americans are bad at football (or soccer, as it's known as locally), they are the Brazilians of Management. This has allowed us to create the first global database of management practices.

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B-Schools Aren’t Bothering to Produce HR Experts

Harvard Business Review

companies were making progress on the operations front, but now they seem to have lost their way—and business schools are in a position to help set them right again. In the 1980s, our organizations learned a great deal about how to improve productivity, quality, and costs from Japanese practices. A few decades ago, U.S.

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Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

Traditional mass manufacturing is based on principles of “Scientific Management” that date back to the 19th century. Workers specialize in simple, highly routinized operations. They are incentivized to complete operations as quickly as possible. Managers hold virtually all decision-making authority.

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Founding a Company Doesn’t Have to be a Big Career Risk

Harvard Business Review

The most important way to mitigate risk is to become excellent at either engineering, product, selling, or operations and management. Lean Product Development and Customer Development processes) decreases the chance of a startup’s failure. Develop deep expertise — your best risk-mitigation strategy .

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Breaking the Death Grip of Legacy Technologies

Harvard Business Review

Managers constantly try to fit new market needs to existing processes and routines. The Future of Operations. automakers took decades to adopt lean production methods despite the obvious benefits from increased productivity and lower work-in-process inventory. Sometimes they are a fit, but often they are not.

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Does Your Leadership Flunk the Testing Test?

Harvard Business Review

The organizational and operational benefits of targeted testing are not. At one telecoms company with a disappointing history of troubled upgrades and delayed rollouts, I saw a key innovation team present its testing program and testing reviews to senior management. These pathologies are nothing new. Jaws dropped.