"At their worst, meetings are like short prison sentences that have you counting the minutes until your release. Yet there are meetings that are useful and productive, and even invigorating and enjoyable."Trecho retirado de "How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really)"
"a fase que se seguiu, entre 2012 e 2015, coincidiu com o início da recuperação dos salários reais e com o crescimento da competitividade e da produtividade na generalidade dos setores. Este novo círculo virtuoso foi impulsionado principalmente pelo lado da procura da economia, uma vez que a faturação das sociedades teve o seu maior crescimento entre 2012 e 2015. O volume de negócios cresceu 12,1% nas indústrias transformadoras, 11,8% nos outros serviços e 9,5% no comércio."O texto refere "recuperação de salários reais" eu escreveria aumento dos salários reais já que estamos a falar de empresas privadas e empresas transformadoras.
"A Elis opera no aluguer e manutenção de roupa de cama, de cozinha e para casa-de-banho, de utensílios de limpeza para casa-de-banho, dispensadores de água e de tapetes e na personalização de fardas de trabalho para os sectores da hotelaria e restauração, saúde, indústria, comércio e serviços."Tudo é serviço!
"Maite, que chegou de Espanha há poucos dias, aplaude a ideia de descobrir o mundo da vinicultura sozinha. “Despertou-me os sentidos e acho que não me escapou nada do museu, onde posso mexer, tocar e até cheirar caixas perfumadas de amora, framboesa ou baunilha, numa mesa para também adivinhar qual o aroma”, diz. Segue logo, sem demora, para a próxima descoberta: desde a vindima na adega, passando pela fermentação até ao envelhecimento e engarrafamento. Mais à frente, uma mostra do solo de xisto e argila do Douro chama-lhe a atenção que, de seguida, salta para as caixas de luz que exploram as tipologias de vinho do Porto — Branco, Ruby, Tawny e Rosé — com a respectiva evolução da tonalidade. E um questionário interactivo pergunta-lhe “Qual é o seu Porto?” para depois lhe enviar um rótulo personalizado com uma sugestão."
"Jorge Coelho quer aprovar, até ao fim deste mês, a construção de um novo aeroporto de Lisboa na Ota."Lembram-se da urgência da construção? A Portela estava a abarrotar e não aguentaria muito mais tempo.
"O aeroporto de Lisboa, agora designado Aeroporto Humberto Delgado, foi dos hubs que mais cresceu em todo o Mundo nos últimos dez anos,"Cresceu 176%!!!
"seru highlights the need to define productivity more specifically in terms of value creation, rather than output. Elaborating the definition of produc- tivity and the TSEF in this way provides insight into why and how production operations deploying seru have been competitive in spite of high labor and other costs."Posso ser um anónimo da província mas ando muito, muito à frente. Perdoem-me a falta de modéstia.
"In 1969, manufacturing strategy pioneer Wickham Skinner wrote about the missing link between an organization's strategy and its operations. In this provocative Forum essay, Richard Schon- berger and Karen Brown argue that this gap is still very much a reality in that both academics and practitioners tend to subscribe to an overly narrow view of operations. [Moi ici: Aquilo a que este anónimo da província chama de mentalidade da tríade, demasiada concentração na eficiência] In a nutshell, there is still too much focus on efficiency.Antes de me sentar a citar este texto dei uma caminhada de 5km por ruas secundárias de Mafamude que não visitava desde 1973. A certa altura olho para uma série de "lojas": uma de imobiliário, uma híbrida entre a mercearia e a chinesa, uma como ginásio de educação, outra de ... e veio-me à mente o pensamento de que reconheceremos Mongo quando começarem a aparecer nos espaços de loja: unidades de fabricação com 2 ou 3 trabalhadores e tecnologia.
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an excessive focus on costs effectively transforms cost into the default competitive priority. A case in point: why do we speak and write about “low-cost environments”? Why is one particular performance dimension privileged like this in our conversations about the geography of manufacturing? Has anyone ever written about “high-responsiveness environments”? Why not?
The task of the operations function is often taken as a given and unchanging. But, in uncertain environments, both task and its boundary conditions change over time e static and dynamic efficiency are very different things. Like Skinner wrote on multiple occasions throughout his career, we must not conceive of operations as a perfunctory task e an immediate candidate for outsourcing and offshoring. Rather, it often belongs to the organizational and strategic core of the firm, and as such must remain strategically relevant over time. If the objective is to remain in sync with changing markets, outsourcing and offshoring may well be the worst decision imaginable."
"Espero que isto não chegue cá, espero que alguém ande a preparar os alarmes e as trancas antes de chegarem os ladrões, "European Commission Publishes Xylella Fastidiosa Factsheet"."
"a JTBD describes how a customer changes or wishes to change. With this in mind, we define a JTBD as follows:
A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she evolves herself through searching for, buying, and using a product.
It begins when the customer becomes aware of the possibility to evolve.
It continues as along as the desired progress is sought.
It ends when the consumer realizes new capabilities and behaves differently, or abandons the idea of evolving.
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A consumer goes along his life as he’s come to know it. Then things change. He is presented with an opportunity for self-betterment — that is, make changes so he can grow. When or if he finds a product that helps him realize that growth opportunity, he can evolve to that better version of himself he had imagined."
"That mismatch has engendered a kind of schizophrenia in the way computer companies view their supply chains. They cling to measures of physical efficiency such as plant capacity utilization and inventory turns because those measures are familiar from their mainframe days. Yet the marketplace keeps pulling them toward measures of responsiveness such as product availability.
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There is a kind of schizophrenia in the way computer companies view their supply chains.
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How does a company in the upper right-hand cell overcome its schizophrenia? Either by moving to the left on the matrix and making its products functional or by moving down the matrix and making its supply chain responsive. The correct direction depends on whether the product is sufficiently innovative to generate enough additional profit to cover the cost of making the supply chain responsive.
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A sure sign that a company needs to move to the left is if it has a product line characterized by frequent introductions of new offerings, great variety, and low profit margins. Toothpaste is a good example. A few years ago, I was to give a presentation to a food industry group. I decided that a good way to demonstrate the dysfunctional level of variety that exists in many grocery categories would be to buy one of each type of toothpaste made by a particular manufacturer and present the collection to my audience. When I went to my local supermarket to buy my samples, I found that 28 varieties were available. A few months later, when I mentioned this discovery to a senior vice president of a competing manufacturer, he acknowledged that his company also had 28 types of toothpaste—one to match each of the rival’s offerings.
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Does the world need 28 kinds of toothpaste from each manufacturer? Procter & Gamble, which has been simplifying many of its product lines and pricing, is coming to the conclusion that the answer is no. Toothpaste is a product category in which a move to the left—from innovative to functional—makes sense.[Moi ici: Um artigo escrito em 1997. Recordar a evolução para Mongo, cada vez mais gente fora da caixa. E para certas tribos isto é fundamental e não pactuam com a funcionalidade pura e simples]
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In other cases when a company has an unresponsive supply chain for innovative products, the right solution is to make some of the products functional and to create a responsive supply chain for the remaining innovative products."
"The typical seru implementation process can be summarized as follows:
1. As customer demands fluctuate, assembly line inefficiencies become apparent and a strategic choice to emphasize responsiveness is made.
2. Assembly lines are dismantled and replaced with divisional seru systems through resource collocation and removal/replacement, cross-training, and autonomy.
3. Expensive dedicated equipment is replaced by inexpensive general-purpose equipment that can be duplicated and redeployed as needed by serus.
4. As cross-training progresses, divisional serus evolve into rotating serus and yatais.
5. As the seru system matures, cell configurability is developed so that exactly the cells required to meet demand can be rapidly formed, then dismantled once demand is met.
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In the years leading up to 1992, production of most high- volume, low-value-added Japanese products was being shifted to low-cost countries because of the Japanese yen's sharp rise. Sony's products did not lend themselves to such offshoring, however, because they were characterized by high variety, low volume, and high value added, with frequent design updates and generational changes. Sony first attempted to respond to its high demand volatility by applying the Toyota Production System mixed-product method to its conveyor lines, but the demand volatility for Sony products substantially exceeded that of Toyota. Rapid changes in product technologies and configurations called for lines to be reconfigurable, whereas the Toyota Production System emphasized investments in expensive, synchronized, integrated production lines. Thus, Sony chose to design its production system to respond to demand volatility, rather than eliminate it as occurs under the Toyota Production System.
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Conveyers were replaced by workbenches, and simple equipment and manual tools were used, so that serus could be constructed, modified, dismantled, and reconstructed quickly and frequently. Although divisional serus were considerably more flexible than assembly lines with respect to product variation and volume changes, the demand for some products was volatile enough to require even more flexibility, so some of the divisional serus were converted into rotating serus.
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As product variants proliferate and product life-cycles shorten, needs for changeovers and transitions rise. In this case, assembly lines with highly specialized workers and equipment (and resulting costly and lengthy change- overs) are likely to struggle more and more to maintain acceptable levels of utilization (uptime). Given the need to meet these highly varying demands, seru systems actually produce swifter and more even flows than assembly lines, because they handle transitions more quickly and efficiently. The emphasis under seru that all tasks are completed in a single cell, all required resources are made available in the cell, and that everything not required is eliminated, has as its objective to support the swift and even flow of products."
"As long as competitive advantage is temporary, even the largest companies have to focus on serving customers in order to stay on top. But if the Blockbusters of the world are able to cement their status and no longer need to fear the Netflixes, customers, competitors, and society all stand to lose."Como não recordar o comboio de empresas do regime que o choque revelado em 2011 tem contribuído para aniquilar.
"The rate of new-product introductions has skyrocketed in many industries, fueled both by an increase in the number of competitors and by the efforts of existing competitors to protect or increase profit margins. As a result, many companies have turned or tried to turn traditionally functional products into innovative products. But they have continued to focus on physical efficiency in the processes for supplying those products. This phenomenon explains why one finds so many broken supply chains—or unresponsive chains trying to supply innovative products—in industries such as automobiles, personal computers, and consumer packaged goods.Trecho retirado de "What Is the Right Supply Chain for Your Product?"
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Functional products require an efficient process; innovative products, a responsive process."
"companies that weren’t born as platform businesses rarely realize that they can—at least partially—turn their products and services into an MSP (multisided platforms)"
"we define a lean operations strategy as one that prioritizes minimization of use of resources through reducing variability and minimizing buffers, and a responsive operations strategy as one that prioritizes the ability to respond to demand volatility (product and quantity), which then requires buffering either with capacity or inventory.
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Seru is a type of cellular manufacturing (CM).
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When demand is highly volatile, however, the value of smoothing demand tends to be lower than the value of responsiveness. Similarly, streamlining the operation of an assembly line through use of the takt time is possible when what is produced does not change, but a rapidly changing product mix eliminates such productivity gains. These practices are combined with the tradition within Toyota Production System of freezing the production schedule eight weeks before production begins, which substantially reduces responsiveness. Assembly lines organized according to Toyota Production System practices can be highly efficient when demand volatility is low. As demand volatility increases, however, assembly lines lack the needed responsiveness and lose the stability that is the source of their outstanding efficiency. Seru thus begins with the transformation of assembly lines into cells. Seru cells resemble biological cellular organisms in that they can be easily constructed, modified, dismantled, and reconstructed, hence the name seru, a Japanese word for cellular organism. In contrast to the fixed cells described elsewhere in the literature, seru cells are defined by their configurability, which plays a key role in their responsiveness. These assembly cells - designed to permit orders to flow seamlessly through the factory - represent a choice to prioritize responsiveness over efficiency.
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[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é tremendo, quando eu falo de Mongo e muita gente fala de automação. Recordar: "Não acredito nestas relações simplistas" e "In principle, the production of virtually any component or assembly operation could be robotized and moved to high-wage countries—but only so long as demand is great enough, and design specifications stable enough, to justify huge scale and hundreds of millions, if not billions, in upfront investments."] When production is organized into a single assembly line, the cost of large-scale automation may be justified by efficiency gains. When demand volatility is high enough to warrant cellular manufacturing, large and costly automated equipment needs to be replaced by small, flexible, and relatively inexpensive equipment that can be duplicated as needed."
"Canon is also looking to boost productivity. Already, the company has seen great gains from "cell assembly," where small teams build products from start to finish rather than each worker repeatedly performing a single task on a long assembly line. Canon now has no assembly lines; it ditched the last of its 20 kilometers of conveyor belts in 2002, when a line making ink-jet printers in Thailand was shut down."Em 2010 no postal "Para quem se queixa da China... (parte IV)" escrevi:
""In the 21st century industry, all successful strategies rely on speed-to-market. Speed-to-market, in turn, can operate only where there exists trust, cooperation and collaboration between customer and supplier. To achieve this, we must change the very nature of our industry strategies." (Moi ici: e as fábricas conseguem guarnecer-se de talento para falarem como parceiros com as marcas e não como recebedoras de encomendas? E os fabricantes de máquinas conseguem agarrar a oportunidade de desenhar as máquinas que permitirão trabalhar com estas séries e frequências? E o lean aqui não será de muito uso, estamos a falar de uma nova organização da produção..."Agora, passados estes anos todos:
"The past three decades have witnessed waves of offshoring by manufacturers in developed countries pursuing low-cost sources of production. Companies like Canon and Sony provide exceptions to the popular offshoring trend. Recognizing that their markets required responsiveness that extended supply chains could not provide, these companies pioneered a production system known as seru that has made it possible to manufacture competitively and profitably in Japan.
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Producing locally has then strengthened their capacity to innovate. In ensuing years, hundreds of Japanese companies, especially electronics makers, have adopted seru, touting impressive benefits. The seru experience provides a useful lens for understanding how manufacturing can be competitive in a high-cost economy.
The seru production system is a type of cellular manufacturing that is distinguished first by the cells being configurable rather than fixed; and second by its use of cells for assembly, packaging, and testing rather than fabrication alone. Seru is defined by its prioritization of responsiveness over cost reduction in setting the firm's operations strategy.
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Seru was developed to cope with high demand volatility and short product life cycles. Innovative manufacturing firms face the challenge of being flexible enough to handle significant process and environment variabilities, yet efficient enough to produce at a competitive cost. A considerable literature suggests that efficient production is best achieved through lean manufacturing, which typically seeks to reduce buffers and to eliminate demand volatility.
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Interestingly, seru was explicitly developed as an alternative to the Toyota Production System (the precursor to lean). The developer of the seru concept - an expert in the Toyota Production System - concluded that implementing the Toyota Production System would not be appropriate in an innovative industry where the primary objective is to respond to demand volatility and fast product development cycles. Rather than adding agility to leanness ... seru begins with the objective of responsiveness: Seru's originators sought to achieve a smooth flow of a wide variety of products and volumes while using resources frugally."
