The reason why top managers should questioned and challenged by us, the Lego edition
For many people that have read about the Toyota Production System (TPS) the image of Toyota has been improved and their willingness to buy a Toyota car has been positively affected (heck, I _want_ to buy a Toyota, I just can't justify buying a car).
But how about reasons not to buy a product from a certain company? What if I told you that management is so incompetent that they outsourced the manufacturing of their core product to a company that had ZERO experience in building that product?
What if I added that this company planned to fire 900 of it's best employees just because they happen to leave near the company's headquarters which is a more expensive location for labor?
I'm guessing that by now you would be saying: "Maybe I should not buy any products from this company anymore..." And you would be on to something there...
But things get worse. The management of this company invested themselves in this outsourcing process with the help of the clueless McKinsey, only to back down and remove all ideas of continuing with the plan. Do you think that management's bonuses were affected? or even that management got fired? Naaah, that would be too logical...
As you guessed, the company is LEGO, and the devastating account of this blatant management incompetence is at Evolving Excellence blog.
at
23:07
But how about reasons not to buy a product from a certain company? What if I told you that management is so incompetent that they outsourced the manufacturing of their core product to a company that had ZERO experience in building that product?
What if I added that this company planned to fire 900 of it's best employees just because they happen to leave near the company's headquarters which is a more expensive location for labor?
I'm guessing that by now you would be saying: "Maybe I should not buy any products from this company anymore..." And you would be on to something there...
But things get worse. The management of this company invested themselves in this outsourcing process with the help of the clueless McKinsey, only to back down and remove all ideas of continuing with the plan. Do you think that management's bonuses were affected? or even that management got fired? Naaah, that would be too logical...
As you guessed, the company is LEGO, and the devastating account of this blatant management incompetence is at Evolving Excellence blog.
Labels: lean, lego, management, outsourcing, tps
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2 Comments:
Some Finnish/German company should read and learn from this story. They are not very different... And like these ones, dozens and dozens more.
By
Anonymous, at December 15, 2008 3:42 PM
Actually if I hadnt read the full story from the blog, I would have mistaken it to be the story of a finnish/german company :-)
By
Anonymous, at December 25, 2008 10:29 PM
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