30 results found for Don Reinertsen, displaying items 1 - 20
June 18, 2001[The Design Factory] Consensus Conspires To Produce Bad Designs
Once upon a time, the Universal Spaghetti Sauce Company's management began using cross-functional teams to design new spaghetti sauces. Supersauce was the first team to use this approach. Its sad story started when it met to develop a specification...
March 5, 2001[The Design Factory] Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It
Years ago, the television show Mission Impossible always began with a scene in which the team leader, Mr. Phelps, would receive a tape describing his next mission. The tape invariably began, "Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."...
August 21, 2000[The Design Factory] Debunking The Fairy Tale Of The Great Process Map
Once again, Mr. Big, the general manager of the Bison Valley Ax Works, was upset with his disorganized engineers. Remembering how process maps had improved the operation of his factory, he decided to take action. He called Grnk, the vice president...
August 7, 2000[The Design Factory] Keeping The Vendor Off The Critical Path
Product developers sometimes ask me how they can shorten development cycles when 80% of their cycle time is dictated by vendor lead times. They correctly point out that most of their product development lead time is determined by long lead-time...
July 24, 2000[The Design Factory] Sometimes We Learn The Wrong Thing
One day Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, was invited by Snrg, the marketing manager, to play goof (an early form of golf) at the Bison Valley Country Club. Snrg was quite good at goofing because he worked in marketing, where this, like eating in...
July 10, 2000[The Design Factory] Garbage In Does Not Always Mean Garbage Out
For decades I had heard the expression "garbage in, garbage out" and nodded my head reverently. Of course, I thought, no answer could be more accurate than the accuracy of its input assumptions. Only recently have I realized that this isn't always...
June 26, 2000[The Design Factory] Finishing The Engineering On The Factory Floor
One day Otto, the manufacturing engineer, did a good deed and guided a lost marketeer back from the hard concrete floors of manufacturing to the plush carpets of marketing. Suddenly, he saw a puff of smoke and a tall green genie appeared. In a...
June 12, 2000[The Design Factory] Drastic Stretch Goals Can Do More Harm Than Good
Ogg, the Cro-Magnon ax designer at the Bison Valley Ax Works, developed a schedule for the Mammoth Whacker III (MWIII). He carefully examined his timesheets for previous ax design projects to estimate how long each subtask should take. He adjusted...
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