Adapt

Adapt is the name of a book by Tim Harford, (Adapt Book page on Tim Harfords website) who works at the Financial Times and presents the excellent Radio 4 program More or Less (Statistics and numbers in the Public Eye, wrestled to the ground).

Adapt is a well researched and readable book that explores the concept of the need for failure in order to thrive on a Market, Corporate and Personal level. He brings together some solid thinking on what we need to do to bring that concept into successful practice.

Many books in the "business" or "personal achievement" shelves will use a simple but eye-catching phrase as the basis of their Life Elixir, and then dredge up plenty of repetitive anecdotal evidence to support it. Not Adapt. In this book, Tim stays "loyal to his readers", by using rigorous studies and trials reported in the public domain to support the work.

This excellent book is worth a read (no, I haven't received any financial reward, this is just one of my occasional book recommendations... for the others click around on Amazon, or look at Book review labels in this Blog).

Applying Flow to NPD

Donald Reinertsen has written a very good book looking at the application of Lean techniques and Flow to the world of New Product development. He also applies his experience of network design problems to consider how inherently variable NPD can benefit from the experience of unpredictable web and phone traffic. There are lots of principles and a useful cost model. Major lessons are to manage queues and understand the cost of delays and not worry too much about utilisation while reducing the batch sizes of work.
When I have some time I'll list out the key interventions his principles propose for our industry. I can recommend his book.

Gemba walks

Gemba Walks by James Womack (Available from Amazon) is an edited and slightly revised collection of his generally excellent Lean e-Letters.

Of particular interest to me is the emphasis that he places on the importance of Purpose. Why are you pursuing Lean? This is an excellent question that stops wild lean activity (e.g. the number of workshops completed) or "Islands of Lean" (Why didn't it make a difference to the customer?). Those that have worked with me on change in Manufacturing and Supply Chain will know that asking why and establishing Purpose is high on my agenda. This was heightened by the work that I have done with McCourts and Roy Sallabank in particular.

A number of clients and others have embarked on Lean transformations without properly answering the question of why and establishing purpose. It takes a brave "belted" expert to ask a VP why are we doing this, but believe me, the largest waste of value is frequently that spent on carrying out a Purposeless Lean programme.

I would recommend Gemba Walks, even if you just read the first few pages!

Black Swans in a post six sigma world?

Black Swan is the name of a book by Nassim Taleb. His life work on the topic of randomness raises good questions for us all in the current situation. Before Black Swans were discovered, accepted wisdom was that all Swans were white. It's a short hand metaphor for surprisingly likely, unusual, extra-ordinary events that can have enormous impacts, unpredictable in a six sigma, normal curve mindset.

Think of monitoring a production line using control charts, working on reducing variation, identifying special causes and then.... the Power supply line to the whole factory is cut by contractors (its happened to me, in my case it was a continuous steriliser in a food factory, and manual control of the steam became essential).

It's outside of your "system envelope", unpredictable, but with a massive impact.

Nassim Taleb shows us that we can't predict these black swans, but we can identify what types of endeavours are likely to suffer them, and hence we can prepare, and maybe react quickly.

On the other side of this are the unexpected, big win black swans. The sort of big impact, highly unexpected wins that are beloved of entrepreneurs. Again we can't predict them, but you have to be in the game to win them...working hard at getting lucky!