Value Chain

Looks like it’s really all over for NUMMI, the Toyota/GM joint auto manufacturing venture in Fremont, CA. Last summer, I wrote a post about the strong possibility of Toyota’s closing the plant (NUMMI: Things Are Looking Gloomy). The plant was losing money. Located in a high-wage area, even potential UAW concessions didn’t seem like enough to allow [...]

Last month, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Phil Angelides, Chairman of Apollo Alliance, along with other business, labor and clean energy leaders introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill intended to facilitate the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production. The purpose of the bill [...]

In a recent post, “GM’s Failure: What Happened to Lean,”  I wrote about the origins of lean at GM and the NUMMI partnership with Toyota. Now, it seems that NUMMI is on Toyota’s chopping block and that Toyota seriously considering shutting down the plant. The NUMMI venture, begun in 1984, helped Toyota make a beach head [...]

Some people are heaving sighs of relief that Chrysler is emerging from bankruptcy in the arms of Fiat and that GM is officially in bankruptcy soon to emerge as leaner and meaner entities. However, many are left holding the proverbial bag. Who are they? The unsecured creditors who are lining up to salvage whatever they [...]

As the pundits pile on the eulogies and praise from the glory days and offer endless criticisms of GM’s catastrophic decline, people will be writing books and analyzing the decline and failure of GM for years to come.
But let’s look at GM from a lean enterprise point of view. GM tried to adopt lean principles [...]

The latest victims of the economic downturn seem to be suppliers in the electronics supply chain. As reported in the May 18th WSJ article “Clarity is Missing Link in Supply Chain“, as business began to contract, Best Buy dramatically cut back their forecasts to electronics companies such as Toshiba just before the holiday season last year, [...]

I was reading the recent blog post at the Spendmatters:   Beyond Shedding the Deadweight in Procurement and Operations. Instead of just cutting headcount, particularly in procurement, Jason Busch suggests other ways to approach cost reduction. Among the suggestions are: driving better efficiency by fully using software solutions in the Procure-to-Pay cycle; using third parties [...]

What steps can you take to avoid supply risk? Be methodical and be proactive. Segment the supply base for risk. And look beyond just the obvious categories. First, look at all types of suppliers who have risk potential, depending on your type of business, such as: direct material suppliers, suppliers providing important services, and transportation suppliers. [...]

In a rush of enthusiasm about a lean supply chain, some firms expect that their suppliers will embrace lean with equal passion. Passion for lean can be contagious, but getting suppliers to adopt lean requires much more work than lean inoculation or indoctrination. Before rushing off and sending out an announcement that suppliers should adopt [...]

 When my company was a small supplier to Boeing, I was of course happy to have landed them as a customer. Our relationship was excellent and added value to both parties. Boeing took a chance with my company, an emerging technology business. And the initial bureaucracy that we had to go through to become a supplier to [...]