November 2008
17 posts
3 tags
Kaizen for Developers: No Inventory
Another basic tenet of Kaizen is that inventory is evil. Inventory is what folks use to cover up the problems and inefficiencies in their production process. In traditional analyses of inventory, the cost of inventory is generally determined based on the cost of the capital that is tied up and the space for the inventory. Kaizen considers a significant additional cost that is much harder to...
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Kaizen for Developers: Lot Size One
A great Kaizen technique is to drive towards lot size one. In manufacturing this means that each part goes through the process separately. It usually also means that you can interpserse different parts in the production process. For instance, in the case of the injection molding supplier for Porsche that I mentioned previously, it meant figuring out how to paint each part separately instead of...
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Saving New York City
Yesterday evening, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC) hosted an event for folks from the financial service industry to discuss the impact of the crisis on the city and what can be done about it. The opening presentation outlined the extent of the problem. In New York City 15% of all employment is in or directly related to financial services, generating 34% of all...
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Kaizen for Developers: The Centrality of Quality
The most fundamental priniciple of Kaizen is the centrality of quality. This expresses itself in three ways. First, quality is seen as central to reducing time and cost: By avoiding defects, you save rework cost and time. Second, quality is not the responsibility of a separate QA department. It is everyone’s responsibility from the CEO to the frontline assembly person. Third, quality...
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Kaizen and Software Development
A long time ago I worked as a management consultant. One of the most fascinating projects from back then was the introduction of Kaizen at several German automotive companies. Kaizen means loosely translated continuous improvement. It is a bundle of techniques applied by Japanese manufacturing companies. The goal of Kaizen is to break out of the notion that there is a fixed cost-time-quality...
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Computer Science Gender Crisis
Over the weekend, the New York Times had an article titled “What Has Driven Women out of Computer Science?” which had the following fairly dramatic chart in it:
It shows female college freshman interested in computer science at an all time low of 0.3%.
I studied computer science as an undergraduate at Harvard from 1987-90. There are a few things that I recall that might have...
4 tags
Fun with jQuery
Over the weekend I decided to play around a bit with jQuery. I had done tiny bits of Javascript front end stuff previously and had heard a lot of good things about jQuery. As a disclaimer upfront, I have not looked at any of the other Javascript libraries, so this is not a comparative view (not even a comprehensive view for that matter). I had a concrete project in mind. DailyLit breaks books...
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FAS 157 or The Law of Unintended Consequences
Start with what seems like a good idea: assets and liabilities on a company’s balance sheet should be adjusted to reflect their fair value. For instance for assets, fair value would not be the price the company paid when it bought the asset (or the cost it incurred in building the asset), but the value it could realize if it sold the asset. A similar concept applies to liabilities. For a...
Addendum on AIG
Someone pointed out to me yesterday that restructuring AIG does not work because it would bring down the financial system. There is definitely that possibility but suspending the mark to market rule would go a long way toward avoiding that. It would then be possible to set up a clearing entity to work through all the CDS and other derivatives that would be impacted. By supporting AIG we are simply...
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Don't Let a Crisis Go to Waste
Rahm Emanuel is quoted as saying “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” I subscribe to that philosophy and believe that the economic crisis that we are facing offer some crucial opportunities. As I have written on the USV blog, we are facing some unprecedented structural changes. We can either choose...
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New TLDs Are Highway Robbery
ICANN once in a while approves a new top level domain (TLD). The latest one that is coming up is .tel (with a sunrise period for existing trademark holders starting December 3, 2009). I consider this a form of highway robbery. Every time ICANN does this existing domain and trademark owners essentially have no choice but to also register their domain under this new TLD or risk having someone...
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Freemium Revisited
With the economy in a tailspin and a gloomy outlook, there is a renewed focus on sustainable business models for startups. One model that has come in for particular scrutiny is “freemium” with posts such as Is Freemium Really the Way to Go? and Freemium is Not a Business Model. But not everyone has given up on it. I just had a conversation with Dave McClure where he said that he has...
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Change.gov
In a heartening display of speed and preparedness, the Obama transition team rolled out Change.gov a day after the election. This is the kind of foresight that we need and was sorely missing over the last 8 years. It is a simple site for now that lays out the agenda for the incoming administration. Importantly though it already sounds a key theme of citizen responsibility and service.
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Toughing it Out
I have presented a bunch of data on household debt, corporate debt, financial sector debt and government debt. But what does it all mean?
First, the economic situation is bad. We had economic growth driven by unsustainable levels of consumer spending which was the result of a housing bubble that made consumers feel richer than they were. At the same time corporations and especially financial...
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Government Debt
Today is the perfect day to be writing about government debt, the last installment in my series on debt. We have just seen in the most dramatic fashion why the US is such a great country. As I pointed out in my election day post, there will be some voices that will focus primarily on the constraints that Obama will face as president and most of those will point to government debt (and the cost...
Excited on Election Day
This morning Susan and I took the kids along to vote. The polling place for us is just up the street at the kids’ elementary school (they are off for the day). At first, the kids were protesting wildly as they had settled in under blankets for a morning of cartoons and realized that is was chilly outside — it was before 7am. But when we got there they were so excited to go into the...
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Financial Sector Debt
And now for the third installment in my mini-series on debt. Up today: financial sector debt. If you thought that the charts on household debt and corporate debt were eye popping, then you better put on some dark shades before you continue reading. As I pointed out in a previous post on the demise of Lehman, leverage in the financial sector has vastly amplified risk. Lehman clearly is not...
