How the consulting world screwed up the ‘Lean’ Idea
The lean idea was started by Toyota in the war-torn Japan in the 1950s, almost by necessity. It turns to be very effective and helped Toyota grow and even dominate the world...
Category
operations management
An successful entrepreneur is a technician, manager and entrepreneur in one
A lot of people start their own businesses because they like doing a particular thing (baking, cooking, designing, selling), but very often they realize there are so many...
How do sustainable supply chains improve the continuity of supply and protect the environment?
Photo: Woods in Sherborn, MA, Summer 2023. Recently I was asked by my School’s PR people to reflect on a few questions regarding the relationship between business...
How large is the supply chain economy? The answer may surprise you
Recently I have been working on a book about the “supplychainification” of economies around the world – If you have never heard about the word...
So Ford Wants to Do Away with its Dealers…
According to the Detroit Free Press, Jim Farley, the current Ford CEO, said that he wants to sell its EVs online rather than through its dealerships. Apparently, he was upset...
A Fascinating Recount of the US Semiconductor History
I recently read a book titled “The Microchip Revolution: A Brief History” authored by Luc Oliver Bauer & E. Marshall Wilder. It has lots of interesting...
A Small Innovation, A Big Saving for the Environment
Just a couple of days, I received my new iPhone shipped from Apple. What I was impressed with was not the phone – the phone was good by all means but it was the clever...
Zillow’s Failure in Housing Flipping is a Classic Example of Ignoring Bottlenecks and Variabilities
By now, we have all heard the story of Zillow losing more than $550 million doing house-flipping. Its CEO blamed it on its forecasting model that produced house-buying prices...
How to Revive the Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry in the US
Before we talk about the “How”, we need to first understand why we need to revive the semiconductor manufacturing in the US. First of all, it is the foundation of...
Port of LA: Storage Space is the culprit?
Recently I read about the saga at the Port of LA. According to Ryan Petersen, the chief executive of logistics company Flexport, the real bottleneck at the Port of LA was...