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It is also worth noting that US management is notoriously bad at the actual management. Toyota v. US car manufacturers did not look like a fair fight when Demin
by roenxi 8mo ago
It is also worth noting that US management is notoriously bad at the actual management. Toyota v. US car manufacturers did not look like a fair fight when Deming was in the ascendant, and it is hard to tell given the scales involved but it looks a lot like the US has been outmanoeuvred in all aspects of industry by the Asians.
US companies are generally a better bet though, because despite the handicap of being run by Americans, they are hosted in a country that generally believes in freedom and rule of law which means they have an unfair advantage even if they do a sub-par job of making the most of what they have.
Exceptions abound in the details.
- arkh 8mo agoThe thing is, the Toyota methods relies on people on every level to work to improve processes. If you're an employee and know you'll be there 10 years down the line or even until you retire, you have an incentive to improve said processes. Now check most Western companies: since the 70 / 80, everything is about reducing headcount. Lay-offs, outsourcing, offshoring, now the concept of spending your whole working life at the same company feels like a fever dream. So why would an employee try to improve things for the company when they know there is no future for them there? Better improve their own career and future prospect. So yeah, things like Kaizen are doomed to fail until things change.
- ghosty141 8mo ago> Lay-offs, outsourcing, offshoring, now the concept of spending your whole working life at the same company feels like a fever dream You are missing something here imo, very few companies actually increase pay (or to be more clear, show a clear way to get there) enough to make it attractive enough to stay there for long periods of time. From my experience here in Germany the people staying at companies for a long time are those who don't focus on their career.
- esafak 8mo agoMoving around distributes knowledge making for a healthier economy overall. The alternative looks like Korean chaebols.
- renewiltord 8mo agoFortunately, once we impose a wealth tax on corporations we can solve this. Billionaire corporations should not exist.
- pjc50 8mo agoI don't think the problems of US corporations are due to being over-capitalized, they're all to do with interactions with the political and media sphere plus unnecessary conflict with the staff.
- renewiltord 8mo agoIf no corporation is allowed more than 1 million dollars (10 years of median income) then 10 average people can counter a single corporation. That’s a good ratio.
- pjc50 8mo agoIt's also impossible to have a larger business than a restaurant, or almost any kind of technological or manufacturing industry. The limited liability corporation has existed for hundreds of years for a very good reason. Heck, even things like shipping, the oldest insured industry, become impossible. Corporations used to have minimum capital requirements that were roughly in the region of a year's average income. https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/Annual-Reports/English/DB14-Chapters/DB14-Why-are-minimum-capital-requirements.pdf https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/medi... ("corporation has too much money" and "individual has too much money" are different problems; Elon Musk is a problem in the way that Apple isn't)
- renewiltord 8mo agoAnd has life gotten better in those years? These days Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai are stealing all of our work. Back in the day, a father could take his kids on a grand tour of Europe and discuss philosophy in the cafes of Vienna all on a single income.
- pjc50 8mo agoThis is rather like my observation about British car companies in the late 20th century: - large factory of British workers + British management: strife, strikes, disaster, bankruptcy (British Leyland) - small factory of British workers + British management: success, on a small scale (lots of the F1 industry, McLaren etc; also true of non-car manufacturing) - large factory of British workers with overseas management: success (Nissan Sunderland, BMW era Mini, etc)
- trevvr 8mo agoWhere does someone like Rover fit in to your matrix? If I can respectfully recommend. If you can go have a read of "We sell our time no more" by Paul Stewart. Tory governance and fiscal policies had all the responsibility for Leyland, Hillman and more importantly Rover.
- pjc50 8mo agoI have to admit it's not that deeply researched. That book sounds interesting. For Rover in particular, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Venture_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Venture_Holdings stands out. Similar to Maplin and Toys R Us, an example of the owner-management taking a large amount of cash out of a business that was declining.
- regularfry 8mo agoWhat's particularly interesting here is that one of the success cases (BMW era Mini) was built on a Rover design. They picked it up and ran with it - basically gutted the electrics and power-train to match their existing systems and supply chains - but it was already in flight when BMW came on. That factory was fascinating to work in, looking back on it I saw a lot of Deming-compatible stuff going on that I wasn't equipped to recognise at the time. There was strong German representation in factory management, lots of interaction with people coming and going from Munich all the time. But the production line staff had a large agency contingent so it didn't have the "job for life" ethos that the Toyota Way would say is essential.
- gzread 8mo ago... do you think Japan doesn't believe in freedom and rule of law?