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You may have heard of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Design – how about Lean Living? The same principles from the factory floor can be applied right in you very own home. Whether it’s the laundry, taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, or handling the mail, you can improve the efficiency of your household by applying Lean principles as if your home were a factory.

Let’s study the laundry process as an example. First, dirty clothes are removed and stored in a buffer (hamper, floor, bedpost, closet). Then, dirty clothes are sorted (usually) into lights and darks or whites and colors. These sorted  piles act as buffers but are eventually transferred to the laundry station and washing and drying. These clothes are sometimes stored in the washing machine or dryer for extended periods of time so these are also used as another buffer or storage location for ‘inventory’. The clothes then folded at the dryer before being transferred back to another holding station in the form of a closet or dresser. Sometimes, the clothes are transferred to a separate folding station in front of the TV or to a bed if there is a lot of folding required. From the start of this process to the end, the clothes have been stored in up to 4 different buffers (closet, hamper, dryer, folding station) and handled as many times.

To improve the efficiency in the laundry process, there are several improvements that can be made.

  1. Eliminate the sorting process by having separate hampers for lights and darks.
  2. If you do an all-in-one laundry load, use your washer as a hamper and eliminate that storage step completely. Place dirty laundry directly into the washing machine.
  3. Fold clothes directly from the dryer and transfer immediately to closets or dressers
  4. For maximum efficiency, wear clothes directly from the dryer and eliminate the folding and storage steps entirely.

Many of the above principles can also be applied to dish washing. Instead of using the cupboard, sink, drying rack, and dishwasher as potential storage and subsequent handling/transferring locations, simple eliminate all of the above for your most frequently used items.  When you need a dish, take it from the dishwasher.  When you are finished with a dish, place it back in the dishwasher.  This eliminates the extra process steps of placing dirty dishes in the sink, for later later transfer to the dishwasher and back to a cupboard.

By now, you’re probably imagining many other applications for Lean Living around your home.  Just a few include:

Garbage – eliminate as many waste baskets as you can in the home.  The more waste baskets, the more garage you will generate and the more time you will spend sorting and getting rid of it. 

Mail – open it and action it immediately to avoid generating mail storage piles that will later need to be sorted and filed. In general, try to touch mail only once. The more times you have to handle a piece of mail, the less efficient your home will be. If you get a bill in the mail, you should open it, pay it, and file it immediately. Otherwise, you may put it in a pile, forget about it, find it later, wonder if it’s paid, pay it late, put it back in a pile, and finally sort it and file it.

Some think that Lean Living is just a sophisticated form of the bachelor lifestyle and you may be right!

dscf4603Last night, I attended a reception in honor of Bob Lutz and the founding of a scholorship in his name.  The event was held at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan just north of GM’s Technical Center in Warren. On display were many of GM’s finest production and concept cars. Here’s a collection of photos from the night. The Heritage Center is not open to the public so this was a great opportunity to see many of GMs best cars under one roof at one time – everything from the Chevette to the Impala SS.

keys1With car keys becoming more electronic with transponders, buttons, key cards, etc., how about a key that provides some REAL functionality? Enter the Swiss Army Knife car key. If you have a small Swiss Army Knife or multi-tool on your key chain or belt, you know what I mean. These small implements come in very handy and if you are handy, than this is the key for you.  It would fit especially well with commercial work vehicles or off-road vehicles. So instead of keys that are ’styled’ to fit a brand, the time has come for keys that are a functional complement of the product.

Who can resist screaming yellow Italian exotic cars like the Lamborghini Gallardo?! I found these images from an old press kit and thought I’d share them with the world.

With newspapers closing and magazines thinning as readership and advertisers dry up due to the global recession, on-line media, e-books, etc. – how we can the print industry reinvent itself? One idea from the Internet age which might transfer back to the print medium is individually targeted advertising and content. Imagine a premium monthly magazine where the content and advertising are tailored for just your interests. If you love golf, heart healthy recipes, para-sailing, California politics, and fast Italian cars, the stories in the magazine would only be about golf, heart healthy recipes, para-sailing, California politics, and fast Italian cars. The content is available from providers around the globe and could be syndicated for the magazine. To help pay for the magazine, advertisers would pay a premium since the magazine is going to a paying customer with very specific interests and known demographics.  The print business would shift to a lower volume, customized product from today’s high volume mass market product. If you just want all your news fast – there’s no better medium than on-line whether it’s your Yahoo! or Google homepage. By editing your preferences, you can get all the information you want about the subjects you want delivered right to your desktop. But if you are reading for pleasure, why not enjoy a beautiful magazine in your hands where every article is about the things you care about and where even the advertisements are something you want to read!

cad-escalade-truckAs a former employee and long time automotive industry veteran, it pains me to see General Motors continue to slowly disintegrate.  The causes are many -ranging from falsely believing they are building what Americans want, to thinking that all their brands are relevant in the market. As a result of years and years of market leadership, Generous Motors has grown old and crotchety.  GM has been unable to recognize that the world is changing around them and unwilling to change with it. How else can you explain the optimism expressed each year as their market share has declined? How strange it is to hear one executive after another brag about the virtues of their overlapping products and brands? And how odd it is that the largest company has done the least to address it’s own overgrown bureaucracy? But the old ship GM which has taken too long to change course has hit an iceberg and is taking on water fast. Can ships this big be steered faster? They have no choice but to do so, and doing so requires drastic measures which are foreign concepts to a large, ponderous corporate culture.

But automotive manufacturing is critical to the U.S. economy because it’s a high technology, high value product that creates wealth and security. Without GM, the domestic auto industry might see Ford and/or Chrysler gain some share but overall domestic make share would certainly drop as some GM defectors will choose import brands. 

So here are a few ideas that might help GM survive more than the next few months (and stop asking for tax payer money!):

  1. Focus on products, not brands. Brands are built from, and are a direct result of great products. Great products make great brands – not the other way around. Things start to go downhill fast when companies start trying to create products to build a brand. The product should come first. A lot of people don’t know this but most Lexus and Scion products are just rebadged Toyotas.  Toyota had the boxy Scion already on the market in Japan and could easily bring it in the U.S.  The Lexus SUVs are also existing Toyotas in other markets. Lexus itself only recently launched in Japan and people there are wondering why they should pay more for a Toyota. Of course once you have a product, it may make sense to sell it under a different brand as Toyota has done in the U.S.  And Toyota with such a wide range of capable core products, they can re-brand as local markets desire with minimal investment and development.
  2. Eliminate the conglomerate of General Motors. The GM entity only dilutes and confuses customers, employees, engineers. Am I buying a GM or a Chevy? Is Saab a GM or Ford? Is Pontiac a Ford or GM? How is GMC different from GM? How does Chevy fit within GM? Asking and answering these types of questions is a complete waste of effort and money. Chevy should be asking how can we make great cars. And if the car turns out great – it will be a great Chevy – making Chevy a great brand. The name GM or General Motors should be invisible to the customer.
  3. Right size the company from an engineering perspective first. Build up a zero based model to support a full line of cars and trucks. Do not try to fill existing plant capacity, keep workers busy, and discount prices to move excess inventory.  Figure out how many cars you can design and develop into products of world class quality and performance, and then see how many brands this product development factory can support.  I figure this means a full line of Chevy cars and trucks, Cadillac luxury products, and perhaps 1 or 2 low effort, low engineering and investment lines (Buick or Pontiac or Saturn or GMC or SAAB, or Opel or Vauxhall or Holden or Hummer but NOT all of them!  This is similar to Mercury for Ford which really doesn’t cost very much to keep and only 1 badge engineered brand doesn’t confuse customers. Toyota has Scion (where the products were already there). BMW has Mini. Honda has Acura (Acuras’ are also Hondas in other markets much like). 
  4. Benchmark employee efficiency with other companies and be better than them.  With so many brands and similar models, GM has too many people, too much indirect cost, too much infrastructure, etc supporting them all.  With fewer brands and models, there is a great opportunity to right size the employee and company base.
  5. I’ll add more as I think of them but feel free to comment with your own!

Here are some good resume writing tips that I’ve gathered from outplacement consultants and executive recruiters.  I can’t promise they will work but they all make sense and I’ve been getting consistently positive feedback on these ideas…

  1. Set up in reverse chronological order starting with your most recent position.  You may have heard of the ‘functional resume’ that lists your skills by function.  This approach is risky as recruiters don’t like surprises might automatically assume your are hiding something. If you aren’t going through a recruiter and want to tell your own story and the functional resume feels like a better fit – then it might be worth a try.
  2. Explain a little about each employer unless it’s a Fortune 100 company.  One line about how big the company is and what business it’s in should suffice.
  3. Explain the scope and role you had in each position.  Again, a single line explaining your responsibilities, level, how many people you managed, what your budget was, etc. This is not one of your accomplishments but just framing what you did at each job.
  4. List several accomplishments including what the problem was, what you did to solve it, and what the result was of your actions. This is a similar approach to how you should answer interview questions – situation, action, result.
  5. List your education at the end unless you recently graduated. Although a recruiter recently told me that the first thing he does when reviewing a resume is to flip to the second page to see where you went to school!
  6. For jobs 15-20 years ago, just state the position – that should be enough.
  7. Avoid objective statements since your objective is to get the job you have written the resume for!
  8. Have a summary statement but keep it brief.
  9. Try to keep it to 2 pages but make it easy to read.  If you have to go to 3 pages or more, then do so but the most important thing is keeping it easy to read.
  10. Avoid gimmicks like neon colored paper unless you are going for a creative marketing/sales job.
  11. Ensure there are no typos, speling or grammatical, errors.  Have several people proof read your resume.
  12. And finally, ensure that all your claims and statements are truthful.

2001-jeep-cherokee1Here it is – my 2001 Jeep Cherokee Limited 4×4.  It’s got 63000 miles but runs perfectly and is in near showroom condition with just a few battle scars from the suburban front.  What’s a Jeep without a little patina? The thing I love about my Jeep is what I call Clarity of Purpose. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Solid axles both front and rear, the Jeep Cherokee XJ was one of the first SUVs on the market and it shows.  Compared to modern SUVs, the XJ is short on cabin room, the steering lacks any on center (or off center feel), interior noise levels are high, and the ride is rough. But you don’t have to live with the other compromises that come with 3rd row seats, below the floor spare tires, low step in heights, and suburban lifestyles. Click here to read why Automobile Magazine’s and Auto and Design’s Robert Cumberford voted the Jeep Cherokee as one of the 20 Greatest Cars of All Time.

d030018-1The 2003 Pikes Peak Quattro Concept took the luxury crossover SUV segment to a conclusion that many other brands had tried to achieve.  Audi created a refined, coherent, substantial, and upscale design that was truly it’s own.  There was no attempt at rugged and tough SUV imagery.  There were no faux off road accessories. The design stood on it’s own and eventually led to the Q7 – arguably, one of the very best looking designs in any segment, at any price. The production Q7 even improves on the Pikes Peak concept – especially from the rear with more definition to the rear lamps.  The massive wheels and wide stance carry through as does the huge Audi ‘intake’ nose.  My only negative is the massive bulk of the design when you see the vehicle in person. And is it just me or do Audi production interiors always look better than their concept interiors?!

qp-executive-gt_03-11I’ve always had a fascination with Maserati and that interest jumped when the Biturbo came out.  Here was a compact car that had a bulldog stance, great design (if a little Baroqueish) and a rich, sumptuous interior with the classic center console analog clock all too common in lesser cars today.

Maserati is doing much better today as part of Fiat. And the Quattroporte holds a special place in the market as a 4 door Ferrari with all the Italian flair and emotion setting it apart from other luxury sedans. The Quattroporte offers a taste of the exotic and the praticality of a sedan.  Here are some of the official press release images from 2007.

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