Saturday, November 22, 2008

Schilderwald lichtet sich - minimal

Ministerium versprach Schilderfahndern 10 Euro Finderlohn

Schilderwald lichtet sich - minimal

Gleich 6.400 Mitarbeiter hatte der NRW-Verkehrsminister im August zu einem Suchspiel aufgefordert. Für jedes überflüssige Verkehrsschild versprach er 10 Euro Finderlohn. Erstes Fazit der Aktion: 300 von 500.000 Schildern können verschwinden.

--- wdr.de

Verkehrsschilder; Rechte: dpaBild vergrößern

Wer behält hier den Durchblick?

Die Schilderflut, auch auf NRW-Straßen, ist häufig eher verwirrend als hilfreich. Das sehen Experten und Verkehrsteilnehmer schon lange so. In den Städten wimmelt es von überflüssigen Geboten und Verboten. Für eine halbe Million Schilder ist der Landesbetrieb Straßen.NRW verantwortlich. Dabei versperren unnütze Schilder oft den Blick auf wirklich wichtige Zeichen. An mancher Straßenkreuzung sind Autofahrer glatt überfordert. Häufig hängen gleich mehrere Schilder über- und nebeneinander. "Lichtet den Schilderwald" forderte deshalb kürzlich NRW-Verkehrsminister Oliver Wittke.

Mehr als 700 Vorschläge

Verkehrsschilder; Rechte: dpaBild vergrößern

Schilderchaos auf den Straßen

Hilfe versprach sich Wittke dabei von rund 6.400 Mitarbeitern des Landesbetriebs Straßenbau. Diesen sagte der Minister im August 2008 einen Finderlohn von 10 Euro für jedes entdeckte und gemeldete unnütze Verkehrszeichen zu. Über 700 Vorschläge sind seit Beginn der Aktion eingegangen. Am Freitag (21.11.08) zog das Verkehrsministerium ein erstes Fazit: Fast 300 Schilder sollen bald verschwinden. Das entspricht 0,06 Prozent aller Schilder von Straßen.NRW.

Dabei geht es nicht um die Abschaffung von Verkehrszeichen, sondern vielmehr um den sinnvollen und sparsamen Umgang mit den Zeichen. Häufig sind bei einer doppelten Beschilderung auf Bundes- und Landesstraßen die linken Schilder überflüssig - einige von ihnen will Straßen.NRW nun entfernen. Verschwinden sollen auch Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen, die nach dem Abschluss von Baustellen nicht wieder abgeräumt wurden. Auch seien oft Vorfahrtsschilder bei Einmündungen von Feldwegen überflüssig, wenn schon eine durchgezogene Linie die Vorfahrt regelt.

Selm - eine Stadt räumt auf

Link

Im münsterländischen Selm ist man da schon einen Schritt weiter. Dort hat man schon vor zehn Jahren erfolgreich den Schilderwald ausgedünnt - als erste Stadt in Deutschland. 1998 guckte man gemeinsam mit dem ADAC viele unnütze Schilder aus, verhängte diese dann mit gelben Säcken, wartete ab, ob sie jemand vermissen würde und trennte sich schließlich von ihnen. Das Ergebnis: 400 Schilder mussten damals raus aus dem Städtchen.

Lehman-Brothers-Produkte bei Ebay

Lehman-Brothers-Produkte bei Ebay --- sueddeutschezeitung.com

Tasse leer 

Kapitalismus für alle: Investmentbanker können jetzt bei Ebay Erinnerungsstücke an die gute alte Zeit ersteigern. Findige Verkäufer verhökern PR-Geschenke von Lehman-Brothers.


vergrößern"Der Letzte-macht-das-Licht-aus-Humor": Lehman-Brothers-Tasse bei Ebay
Foto: privat
 

Es ist nicht ganz zwanzig Jahre her, da tätigte der kapitalistische Westen seine kleinen ironischen Ausverkaufgeschäfte in Sachen Sozialismus. Als nämlich in den letzten Tagen des Jahres 1989 die DDR ausgeräumt und die Mauer stückweise abgetragen wurde, begann ein kurzer Handel mit Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat-Devotionalien zu blühen.

Auf den kleinen Flohmärkten - wir reden ja von einer Welt, die noch samt und sonders eine analoge Welt war - da lagen überall die mit Farbresten legierten Mauerstückchen aus, und wer ein solches Bröckchen besaß, der konnte damit den nächsten Generationen seine Zeitzeugenschaft beweisen.

Handfeuerwaffen als Scherzartikelware

Natürlich wurden damals auch die Asservatenkammern der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik geplündert, und was man dort alles fand, konnten die Wessis ganz gut für ihre politisch-ironischen Faschingsbälle gebrauchen: alte NVA-Uniformen, Generalsmützen, das ganze Ordensblech und mehr oder weniger verbleite Handfeuerwaffen - der gesamte Krempel aus dem Kalten Krieg geriet zur Scherzartikelware.

Wer damals die eher feinen Spielarten der Verhöhnung liebte, presste alte Marx-, Engels-, Lenin-, Lukács- und Pieck-Ausgaben in sein Bücherregal und ließ sich von Besuchern für seine subtile Art bewundern, dem scheinbar versunkenen Ideengebäude des Sozialismus noch einmal einen letzten sarkastisch-musealen Auftritt zu verschaffen.

Es war dieser "Der Letzte-macht-das-Licht-aus-Humor", über den sich alle schiefgelacht haben damals, und der ist heute wieder im Angebot - und will denn diesmal keiner drüber lachen, nein?

Seit die amerikanische Investmentbank Lehman Brothers mit ihrer monströsen Pleite das Zeitalter der Krise eingeläutet hat, stehen diverse Firmen-Devotionalen zum Verkauf. Und weil die meisten Flohmärkte ja heute nicht mehr analog sind, findet man die Lehman-Brother-Scherzartikel jetzt bei Ebay.

Albert Einstein

Person of the Century:
Albert Einstein

He was the pre-eminent scientist in a century dominated by science. The touchstones of the era — the Bomb, the Big Bang, quantum physics and electronics — all bear his imprint
 

 Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Relativity
 J. Madeleine Nash: Einstein's Unfinished Symphony
 Roger Rosenblatt: The Age of Einstein
 TIME's Choice: Who Mattered — and Why
 Runner-Up: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
 Runner-Up: Mohandas Gandhi
 The Necessary Evil? Why Hitler Is Not Person of the Century

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000
He was the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed.

Even now scientists marvel at the daring of general relativity ("I still can't see how he thought of it," said the late Richard Feynman, no slouch himself). But the great physicist was also engagingly simple, trading ties and socks for mothy sweaters and sweatshirts. He tossed off pithy aphorisms ("Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it") and playful doggerel as easily as equations. Viewing the hoopla over him with humorous detachment, he variously referred to himself as the Jewish saint or artist's model. He was a cartoonist's dream come true.

Much to his surprise, his ideas, like Darwin's, reverberated beyond science, influencing modern culture from painting to poetry. At first even many scientists didn't really grasp relativity, prompting Arthur Eddington's celebrated wisecrack (asked if it was true that only three people understood relativity, the witty British astrophysicist paused, then said, "I am trying to think who the third person is"). To the world at large, relativity seemed to pull the rug out from under perceived reality. And for many advanced thinkers of the 1920s, from Dadaists to Cubists to Freudians, that was a fitting credo, reflecting what science historian David Cassidy calls "the incomprehensiveness of the contemporary scene — the fall of monarchies, the upheaval of the social order, indeed, all the turbulence of the 20th century."

Einstein's galvanizing effect on the popular imagination continued throughout his life, and after it. Fearful his grave would become a magnet for curiosity seekers, Einstein's executors secretly scattered his ashes. But they were defeated at least in part by a pathologist who carried off his brain in hopes of learning the secrets of his genius. Only recently Canadian researchers, probing those pickled remains, found that he had an unusually large inferior parietal lobe — a center of mathematical thought and spatial imagery — and shorter connections between the frontal and temporal lobes. More definitive insights, though, are emerging from old Einstein letters and papers. These are finally coming to light after years of resistance by executors eager to shield the great relativist's image.

Unlike the avuncular caricature of his later years who left his hair unshorn, helped little girls with their math homework and was a soft touch for almost any worthy cause, Einstein is emerging from these documents as a man whose unsettled private life contrasts sharply with his serene contemplation of the universe. He could be alternately warmhearted and cold; a doting father, yet aloof; an understanding, if difficult, mate, but also an egregious flirt. "Deeply and passionately [concerned] with the fate of every stranger," wrote his friend and biographer Philipp Frank, he "immediately withdrew into his shell" when relations became intimate.

Einstein himself resisted all efforts to explore his psyche, rejecting, for example, a Freudian analyst's offer to put him on the couch. But curiosity about him continues, as evidenced by the unrelenting tide of Einstein books (Amazon.com lists some 100 in print).

The pudgy first child of a bourgeois Jewish couple from southern Germany, he was strongly influenced by his domineering, musically inclined mother, who encouraged his passion for the violin and such classical composers as Bach, Mozart and Schubert. In his preteens he had a brief, intense religious experience, going so far as to chide his assimilated family for eating pork. But this fervor burned itself out, replaced, after he began exploring introductory science texts and his "holy" little geometry book, by a lifelong suspicion of all authority.

His easygoing engineer father, an unsuccessful entrepreneur in the emerging electrochemical industry, had less influence, though it was he who gave Einstein the celebrated toy compass that inspired his first "thought experiment": what, the five-year-old wondered, made the needle always point north?

At age 15, Einstein staged his first great rebellion. Left behind in Munich when his family relocated to northern Italy after another of his father's business failures, he quit his prep school because of its militaristic bent, renounced his German citizenship and eventually entered the famed Zurich Polytechnic, Switzerland's M.I.T. There he fell in love with a classmate, a Serbian physics student named Mileva Maric. Afflicted with a limp and three years his senior, she was nonetheless a soul mate. He rhapsodized about physics and music with her, called her his Dolly and fathered her illegitimate child — a sickly girl who may have died in infancy or been given up for adoption. They married despite his mother's objections, but the union would not last.

A handsome, irrepressible romantic in those years, he once had to apologize to the husband of an old flame after Mileva discovered Einstein's renewed correspondence with her. He later complained that Mileva's pathological jealousy was typical of women of such "uncommon ugliness." Perhaps remorseful about the lost child and distanced by his absorption with his work — his only real passion — and his growing fame, Mileva became increasingly unhappy. On the eve of World War I, she reluctantly accompanied Einstein to Berlin, the citadel of European physics, but found the atmosphere insufferable and soon returned to Zurich with their two sons.

By 1919, after three years of long-distance wrangling, they divorced. He agreed to give her the money from the Nobel Prize he felt sure he would win. Still, they continued to have contact, mostly having to do with their sons. The elder, Hans Albert, would become a distinguished professor of hydraulics at the University of California, Berkeley (and, like his father, a passionate sailor). The younger, Eduard, gifted in music and literature, would die in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Mileva helped support herself by tutoring in mathematics and physics. Despite speculation about her possible unacknowledged contributions to special relativity, she herself never made such claims.

Einstein, meanwhile, had taken up with a divorced cousin, Elsa, who jovially cooked and cared for him during the emotionally draining months when he made the intellectual leaps that finally resulted in general relativity. Unlike Mileva, she gave him personal space, and not just for science. As he became more widely known, ladies swarmed around him like moonlets circling a planet. These dalliances irritated Elsa, who eventually became his wife, but as she told a friend, a genius of her husband's kind could never be irreproachable in every respect.

Cavalier as he may have been about his wives, he had a deep moral sense. At the height of World War I, he risked the Kaiser's wrath by signing an antiwar petition, one of only four scientists in Germany to do so. Yet, paradoxically, he helped develop a gyrocompass for U-boats. During the troubled 1920s, when Jews were being singled out by Hitler's rising Nazi Party as the cause of Germany's defeat and economic woes, Einstein and his "Jewish physics" were a favorite target. Nazis, however, weren't his only foes. For Stalinists, relativity represented rampant capitalist individualism; for some churchmen, it meant ungodly atheism, even though Einstein, who had an impersonal Spinozan view of God, often spoke about trying to understand how the Lord (der Alte, or the Old Man) shaped the universe.

n response to Germany's growing anti-Semitism, he became a passionate Zionist, yet he also expressed concern about the rights of Arabs in any Jewish state. Forced to quit Germany when the Nazis came to power, Einstein accepted an appointment at the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., a scholarly retreat largely created around him. (Asked what he thought he should be paid, Einstein, a financial innocent, suggested $3,000 a year. The hardheaded Elsa got that upped to $16,000.) Though occupied with his lonely struggle to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a single mathematical framework, he watched Germany's saber rattling with alarm. Despite his earlier pacifism, he spoke in favor of military action against Hitler. Without fanfare, he helped scores of Jewish refugees get into an unwelcoming U.S., including a young photographer named Philippe Halsman, who would take the most famous picture of him (reproduced on the cover of this issue).

Alerted by the &eacutemigré Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard to the possibility that the Germans might build an atom bomb, he wrote F.D.R. of the danger, even though he knew little about recent developments in nuclear physics. When Szilard told Einstein about chain reactions, he was astonished: "I never thought about that at all," he said. Later, when he learned of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he uttered a pained sigh.

Following World War II, Einstein became even more outspoken. Besides campaigning for a ban on nuclear weaponry, he denounced McCarthyism and pleaded for an end to bigotry and racism. Coming as they did at the height of the cold war, the haloed professor's pronouncements seemed well meaning if naive; Life magazine listed Einstein as one of this country's 50 prominent "dupes and fellow travelers." Says Cassidy: "He had a straight moral sense that others could not always see, even other moral people." Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holton adds, "If Einstein's ideas are really naive, the world is really in pretty bad shape." Rather it seems to him that Einstein's humane and democratic instincts are "an ideal political model for the 21st century," embodying the very best of this century as well as our highest hopes for the next. What more could we ask of a man to personify the past 100 years?


Thursday, November 20, 2008

The deflation index

The deflation index

Nov 20th 2008
From Economist.com

A jump in mentions of “deflation” in news stories


ONLY a few months ago, inflation was the main concern of central banks as the price of oil and other commodities soared. Deflation was not only unthinkable but rarely mentioned in the press. Back in August, only six stories in the Wall Street JournalInternational Herald Tribune and the Times mentioned “deflation”. In November, there have already been 50, and new figures released this week will mean many more. America's consumer-price index fell by 1% in October from September as oil prices plunged, the largest monthly fall since the series began in 1947. Britain's inflation rate has also fallen from its record high of 5.2% in September to 4.5% in October, the biggest drop in 16 years.

Shutterstock

Assessing innovation metrics: McKinsey Global Survey Results

Assessing innovation metrics: McKinsey Global Survey Results

A recent McKinsey Global Survey shows that companies are satisfied, overall, with their use of metrics to assess innovation portfolios—though many findings suggest that they shouldn’t be. The companies that get the highest returns from innovation do use metrics well; these organizations tend to assess innovation more comprehensively than the others.

Even in the current economic turmoil, innovation remains a high strategic priority for most companies, and many see it as a strong contributor to growth. Yet many also struggle to measure the performance of their innovation portfolios. In a recent McKinsey Global Survey,1 we asked senior executives which types of innovations their companies pursue, which ones they measure and with what metrics, what goals they have in using metrics, and how satisfied they are with the metrics they choose.

Companies reporting the highest contribution to growth from their innovation projects tend to be more interested in pursuing and measuring their innovations as a portfolio and therefore use metrics across the whole innovation process. In the end, they are more satisfied than others with the ability of such metrics to help their organizations do everything from aligning individual performance incentives to improving innovation performance to communicating with investors.

Sixteen percent of the respondents say that their companies don’t use any metrics to assess innovations. Among those that do, most are satisfied overall, though the findings suggest they aren’t effectively using these metrics as well as they could. Most notably, companies are much likelier to rely on metrics for outputs than for inputs, so they aren’t assessing the whole process of innovation. Forty-five percent don’t track the relationship between spending on innovation and shareholder value. Further, although many companies are satisfied with their use of innovation metrics in general, far fewer are satisfied with specific uses, such as aligning individual performance incentives.

Notes

1Conducted in October 2008, the survey had 1,075 respondents, all C-level or other senior executives, representing a full range of regions and industries.



What gets measured and why

Innovation is a high strategic priority for most companies (Exhibit 1). However, this survey shows slightly fewer senior executives either selecting it as the top priority or placing it among the top three than those who responded to a similar question last year:2 65 percent now, compared with 70 percent in 2007. This drop may reflect the fact that the latest survey was in the field after the credit crunch and stock market turmoil had begun to reorder many companies’ priorities.

The kinds of innovation companies take up are diverse. Yet no matter what form of innovation they pursue, far fewer companies measure it than pursue it (Exhibit 2).

Respondents say that their companies use about eight metrics, on average, to assess innovations. They cite three main reasons for doing so: to provide strategic direction for innovation activities, to guide the allocation of resources to innovation projects, and to diagnose and improve overall innovation performance.

Notes

2In September 2007, a McKinsey Global Survey asked, “Over the next three to five years, how important will innovation as a major driver of growth be on your leadership team’s agenda?” See “How companies approach innovation: A McKinsey Global Survey,” mckinseyquarterly.com, October 2007.



How metrics are used

Although the goals of companies would suggest the need to emphasize the overall innovation process, that process is rarely the focus of the metrics companies use most. When asked which metric is the single most important among those used, executives are much likelier to cite a few simple outcome metrics than input metrics or performance metrics, such as time to market or time to breakeven (Exhibit 3). When respondents indicate the three metrics they use most, the order is the same. There are surprisingly few differences among companies in different industries or regions.

At companies that track the relationship between shareholder value and spending on innovation, the three most important metrics are all externally focused: revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and the percentage of sales from new products or services. At companies where innovation is the most important strategic priority, the top three metrics are a somewhat more comprehensive mix: customer satisfaction, the number of ideas in the pipeline, and R&D spending as a percentage of sales.

In addition, though companies typically assess their performance in most areas relative to that of their peers, many companies don’t do so with innovation metrics. One reason may be that competitive data on the innovation metrics that companies use most frequently aren’t always available. In any case, 49 percent of the respondents say they don’t benchmark themselves against competitors on any of the innovation metrics they use, while 43 percent say that they do.

Regardless of the combination of innovation metrics respondents use and why, more than 70 percent of them say they at least somewhat agree that their organizations are satisfied with the usefulness of these metrics (Exhibit 4). Most notable, though executives are satisfied overall, less than a third agree or strongly agree that they are satisfied with any specific use of these metrics. Companies may be tracking more innovation metrics than they can put to good use.



Following the money

Just over half of all respondents say their companies are spending about the right amount on innovation, given its strategic importance. (Interestingly, 7 percent say their companies are spending too much.) When asked how annual innovation spending is determined, the largest number of respondents say that their organizations consider the available opportunities (Exhibit 5).3

Less than a third of the respondents’ companies track the relationship between spending on innovation and shareholder value (and nearly a quarter don’t know whether or not they do so). However, innovation is generally seen as a strong contributor to organic growth (Exhibit 6), probably indicating that companies find their innovations worthwhile overall. This interpretation is consistent with a finding from another McKinsey survey on innovation, in which 58 percent of the respondents, when asked about a single major innovation at their companies, said that the innovation had been very or extremely successful.

Notes

3This is consistent with one of the 2007 survey’s findings: only 27 percent of senior executives said then that their processes for planning budgeting, strategy, and growth (including innovation) were fully integrated. See “How companies approach innovation: A McKinsey Global Survey,” mckinseyquarterly.com, October 2007.



Innovation, metrics, and growth

One group of respondents both reported higher organic growth rates than their competitors did and said that at least 31 percent of their organic growth comes from innovation. These respondents have a somewhat different approach to using innovation metrics. In general, they have a greater interest in pursuing and measuring their innovations as a portfolio: they are more likely than other respondents to pursue and measure all types of innovation, and nearly a quarter (far more than other executives) say that creating a balanced portfolio of innovations is one reason they use metrics. High performers are also much less likely—29 percent, compared with 37 percent of other respondents—to say that they base their innovation spending on the relative attractiveness of individual projects.

These high-performing organizations use, on average, only one more metric than all respondents do. But they are likelier to use metrics across the whole innovation process, such as assessing the number of people actively devoted to innovation, the number of new ideas sourced from outside the organization, and the percentage of innovations that meet their development schedules. Like the companies of most other respondents, the high-performing ones also track the financial returns from innovation in general and customer satisfaction with specific innovations.

Finally, high performers are satisfied with their use of metrics across a wide range of activities, including allocating resources, aligning metrics with individual performance incentives, and communicating with investors (Exhibit 7). These companies may be more satisfied because they make greater use of metrics that, taken together, assess the whole process of innovation.

Looking ahead
  • Companies that use innovation metrics are, on the whole, satisfied with their use. The many companies that don’t track their innovations can probably gain a better understanding of their innovation performance just by introducing some of these metrics.
  • Many companies would gain a deeper understanding of their innovation performance if they paid more attention to input metrics as well as output metrics, benchmarked themselves against their competitors, and dug into the relationship between innovation spending and shareholder value.
  • Although executives are on the whole satisfied with the way their companies use innovation metrics, the findings indicate significant room for improvement in many individual applications—most notably, aligning metrics with individual performance incentives and using them to communicate effectively with investors. 
About the Contributors

The contributors to the development and analysis of this survey include Vanessa Chan, an associate principal in McKinsey’s Philadelphia office; Chris Musso, an associate principal in the Cleveland office; and Venkatesh Shankar, the Coleman chair professor at the Mays Business School, at Texas A&M University. They would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of George Day, Boisi professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and of David J. Reibstein, the Woodside professor at Wharton.

Convergence is the word

20 November 2008

Convergence is the word

The goal moving forward is to squeeze as much profit out of the plant floor as possible. To do that, it will mean change, and that will necessitate converging plant floor technologies and know how with IT’s expertise.

“A tough environment like this is where leaders separate from the pack,” said Keith Nosbusch, chairman and chief executive of Rockwell Automation, during his keynote address Wednesday at Automation Fair in Nashville.

Rockwell’s message during this year’s Fair is all about convergence. The company feels if the plant floor and the IT department unite into a team, there will be far greater overall advantages.

“We do have an opportunity during this downside to be leaders of the pack,” said Paul McNab, vice president of enterprise and mid-market solutions marketing at Cisco, during his portion of the keynote. “Information has changed from just data to data, voice and video. This is an opportunity to not only analyze the data, but to put it in context.”

McNab said the PDA, his information vehicle of choice, can do just about anything he needs to get his job done. The technology loaded onto the PDA is able to put everything in context, he said.

That is change that manufacturing can adopt, he added.

“We are going through massive unprecedented change, with regulations, globalization and virtualization. The big issue ends up being what is the threat and what is the opportunity?”

McNab went on to say, the combining of the plant floor and IT is going to happen whether people like it or not, so it might be wise to embrace it.

“It is your choice, you can be the disrupted or the disruptor.”

In this global workforce, for a company to survive, it is all about getting the most out of a process as possible.

“We have to increase productivity if we want to compete in a global economy,” McNab said. “We have to start thinking differently.”

One of the ways to start thinking differently is to step away from the linear mindset. Instead of things going from point A to point B to point C, why not try a new and different way.

“Non linear thought works in other industries, why can’t it work in manufacturing?” McNab asked.

Bob Honor, Rockwell’s vice president of information solutions, agreed.

“We still have way too many manufacturing operations working in silos,” he said. “Globalization brings new competitive challenges, but innovation has circled around to center stage. Innovation can and must occur in all operations.”

—Gregory Hale

For more information, go to www.isa.org/productivity.

Beyond manufacturing: The evolution of lean production

Beyond manufacturing: The evolution of lean production

Many nonmanufacturing sectors are rapidly adopting lean techniques. Soon they will no longer be a differentiating factor in themselves; the important thing will be how well you implement them.

AUGUST 2007 • Stephen Corbett --- from Mckinsey Quarterly

Lean principles were originally developed in industrial operations as a set of tools and practices that managers and workers could use to eliminate waste and inefficiency from production systems—reducing costs, improving quality and reliability, and speeding up cycle times. Toyota Motor pioneered lean practices, and much of their allure today stems from the fact that the phenomenal performance of this automaker, in one of the world’s most competitive sectors, rests to a considerable extent on its ability to develop and perfect these practices over the past five decades.

Recently, lean techniques have moved from manufacturing plants to operations of all kinds, everywhere: insurance companies, hospitals, government agencies, airline maintenance organizations, high-tech product-development units, oil production facilities, IT operations, retail buying groups, and publishing companies, to name just a few. In each case the goal is to improve the organization’s performance on the operating metrics that make a competitive difference, by drawing employees into the hunt to eliminate unneeded activities and other forms of operational waste.

The biggest challenges in adopting the lean approach in nonindustrial environments are to know which of its tools or principles to use and how to apply them effectively. In emerging markets such as China or India, manufacturing managers trying to implement the lean approach also face these challenges. Differences in everything from culture to infrastructure mean that managers can’t apply the lean tools and techniques used in manufacturing operations in Moline or Munich to nonindustrial environments or to manufacturing plants in the developing world; the approach must be tailored to the realities of specific environments.

The four articles listed below show how managers have met the challenge of applying the lean approach in a variety of operating contexts. In the public sector, for instance, we’ve seen managers use lean tools and frameworks with existing resources to deliver more and better services. Applications-development organizations—the units that write new software for the IT operations of large companies—have adopted an overall end-to-end perspective for the coding process. In China multinational and domestic companies are achieving positive results through frequent kaizen events (group problem-solving sessions) that help Chinese workers to participate in discussions more directly. Finance departments have successfully used lean principles and tools in accounting and budget processes, reinforcing a fundamental point of the lean philosophy: everything starts with the customer.

Finally, as the lean approach percolates into ever wider circles of operations, it ceases to be about best practice and starts to become a part of the fabric of doing business. Operating executives in many sectors are adopting lean techniques rapidly, so soon they will no longer be a differentiating factor; the important thing, in the heat of competition, will be how well companiesimplement them. This next level of the lean journey is managing the softer side of the equation—less about tools and frameworks, more about building the energy and engagement of employees from the shop floor and the office pool upward, tapping into their ideas, focusing them on constant problem solving, and keeping them open to change and flexibility. 

About the Author

Stephen Corbett is a principal in McKinsey’s Toronto office.