Living in Ohio and Loving Japan

Just checking in ...

Last we heard, our heroes at Dana Holding Corp. were battling the evil auspices of bankruptcy, looking for a protagonist -- a champion among men -- to wield his lean sword and rescue them from their inefficiency laden business practices.

Turn the page past Chapter 11, and Dana is now posting gains in the millions since Toyota veteran Gary Convis proved to be just the knight in shining armor they needed.

The automobile-components manufacturer and supplier pulled out of a $550-million loss from 2007 with a little lean manufacturing savvy from Convis, who was named Dana's CEO just months ago.

January through March of this year saw a posted profit of $685 million, compared with a $92-million loss posted this same time last year for the Toledo-based company.

Dana has been one of the few auto parts suppliers to emerge smiling in a landscape of declining vehicle production. The Fortune 500 company has been coping with the unprecedented increase in steel prices by saving in other areas.

"Our goal is to drive out waste in all the systems and business' process," Convis said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

In that vein, Dana has been taking its cues from a Toyota philosophy embedded deep in Convis' heart: Total Productive Maintenance. Aimed at streamlining processes and promoting worker autonomy, TPM's ultimate benefit is an increase in machine and equipment efficiency and longevity. Sometimes just bypassing costly repairs and extreme maintenance costs is enough to help out a company's bottom line. But in this case, Toyota implementation had to go a bit further.

Dana saw a total overhaul with a radical lean restructuring plan and an accounting boost. And with the addition of another Toyota veteran, VP of operation excellence Marty Bryant, Convis is poised to keep Dana functioning Toyota-style: lean and mean and barreling ahead. No more Chapter 11s for this fairytale. It's hard to say what's next in Dana's story, but with Convis running this Fortune 500 kingdom, peace should prevail for the time being as workers happily dance along autonomously whilst that great beast known as insolvency stays locked up.

Lean and Green!

Who's going green? Companies throughout the world are caught in the wave of leafy green spunk, touting themselves as reformed, efficient greensters. But there is a little more to making your supposedly earth-loving biz green than just paying a few extra bucks for the recycling guy to pick up some additional color-coded bins each month.

Being lean and green is a very possible and very real thing, according to environmental management research pioneers Rothenberg and Maxwell. There are strong correlations between good manufacturing practices and superb environmental performances. As you take a page from lean and get that warehouse cleaned up and running more efficiently, that organization can better the environment ... Better-running equipment and a cleaner facility all around are good, earth-friendly components. Further, employing lean manufacturing techniques inevitably leads to less waste and lower inventory levels. Those companies that really take lean above and beyond are eligible for ISO9001 certification (superior quality management systems), which can be a precursor to adopting ISO14001 standards (superior environmental management). These certifications are set forth by the International Organization for Standardization, a non-government entity that endorses world-wide proprietary, industrial, and commercial standards.

A company can go green these days in a number of ways. Use renewable energy and biofuels, redesign production systems to be more environmentally friendly (cleaner, more efficient technologies), help your equipment to fulfill their maximum useful lifespans, or implement a new rage called TQEM (Total Quality Environmental Management).

A brilliant example of a company who successfully went lean and green is 3M, our favorite scotch tape pusher. The international diversified technology company created the 3P program for its worldwide facilities: Pollution Prevention Pays. In the name of preventing pollution at its source, the worldwide mega-co began using water-based coating for tablets in substitution for solvent-solution coating. The results? A $15k cost savings per year in raw materials, the prevention of 24 tons of air pollution, and the $180k-break that came with elimination of pipe treatment for air pollution concerns.

Nicely done, 3M! Let's get more companies on board. Lean implementation has been on the rise for the past few decades; adopting green should seem natural and complimentary to an already lean facility. You did it for your bottom line before; now do it for your earth.

The following video is a report about Toyota and lean manufacturing techniques that was aired on "Report on Business Television"

It provides a good overview of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which is the overall name for the lean manufacturing techniques Toyota developed, such as kaizen, kanban (JIT) and 5S. Their lean manufacturing techniques have given Toyota the ability to "produce cars the way Dell makes computers. " They have no inventory and they make each car to customer specifications as they are ordered. This is called flexible assembly.

This 4:20 minute video points out that the corporate culture is important. Everyone from the top down must embrace and support TPS principles. For example, unlike other car manufacturers the Toyota production line does not have a lot of quality inspectors at the end of the line. They are not needed because quality goes into the product, and is verified, during production.