Content by William A. Levinson
The da Vinci Tank: A Lean Manufacturing Perspective Tank, or a lethal assembly line?
Wed, 07/03/2013 - 14:59
Renaissance engineer and artist Leonardo da Vinci is well known as the intellectual father of the modern tank, submarine, and helicopter. He reputedly introduced a deliberate design flaw into his tank’s locomotion system because he never wanted…Henry Ford’s Universal CodeThe book with all the answers
Mon, 05/06/2013 - 12:55
Henry Ford’s My Life and Work is the bible of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World, which is an excellent example of hiding something in plain view. The people in Huxley's story essentially worship Henry Ford, with the sign of the T (Model T)…Yahoo! vs. Henry FordWhen smoke signals replaced runners and messengers, we humans were on to a good thing
Mon, 04/22/2013 - 11:44
An article in the April 2013 edition of Quality Progress titled “Back to Work” reports that Yahoo! now requires employees who previously telecommuted to report to a Yahoo! office, or even relocate so they will be able to do so.
“To become the…The Henry Ford of Renewable EnergyWe must get the price sufficiently low and the performance sufficiently high
Wed, 03/06/2013 - 09:46
Automobiles were once high-maintenance luxuries that only the wealthy could afford. Renewable energy, such as that from photovoltaic sources, also is a luxury among whose sole redeeming qualities are its uninterruptable nature—at least during the…Eliminate <em>Muda</em> from Aircraft BoardingOften it takes common sense, not the theory of constraints, to stop waste
Thu, 01/24/2013 - 15:49
It is a basic principle that muda (waste) often hides in plain view, and it persists because people become used to living with it or working around it. Bricklaying, one of the world’s oldest trades, is a classic example.
Frank Gilbreth, a pioneer…Henry Ford Would Dump CaliforniaCap and trade one evil for another
Thu, 12/13/2012 - 16:14
Henry Ford would have fired for incompetence any manager who tried to move jobs offshore for cheap labor. He believed—and more important, proved—that intelligent management can make most jobs sufficiently value-adding to justify high wages for…Large Cities Are Now <em>Muda</em>Internet technology has ended the city’s usefulness as a center of commerce
Wed, 12/05/2012 - 10:21
The New York metropolitan area took longer than other regions to recover from Hurricane Sandy, due largely to the logistical difficulty of getting things into and out of cities in general. Problems included, for example, gasoline rationing because…Are Your Attribute Control Charts Obsolete?Take advantage of sophisticated control chart methods
Thu, 09/20/2012 - 11:57
The traditional control charts for nonconformances (np and p) and defects (c and u) date back to the 1920s, and they rely on the normal approximation to the binomial and Poisson distributions, respectively. This approximation works best when the…Energy and Environmental Gap Analysis from 1909Human engineers have yet to beat nature in efficiency
Wed, 08/22/2012 - 13:26
ISO 14001 originated in the 1990s, and ISO 50001 is even newer. The basic and easily understandable concepts behind them have, however, been around for more than 100 years.
Harrington Emerson’s paper, “Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages…Needed: A New Model for Public Education It’s possible to streamline learning and improve teachers’ salaries without raising taxes
Fri, 07/06/2012 - 15:40
Two thousand years ago, somebody (like the future Alexander the Great) who wanted to learn from a famous philosopher (like Aristotle) had to visit him in person, or vice versa. Written correspondence was of course possible, but every letter had to…