Day 148: Japan vs. Germany/Hurry Up and Wait

Short blog entry this week... just a quick update really.

I am so excited - this time next week I will be getting ready to board a plane for Germany to start my Lean Europe tour. While in Europe, I will get to visit Porsche, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Lamborghini, Pagani, and the Ferrari Museum. An extra day in Stuttgart at the start and two extra days in Florence at the end, it should be a great trip.

I am a minor car nerd, particularly for German cars (we are on our 3rd Audi now), so I am super stoked about this trip. Being able to access these factories is a pretty amazing opportunity, and I'm really lucky. I am also really curious to see the difference between a Japanese car factory and a German one. I found these pictures from an import car show in Los Angeles in 1958, so I thought I'd give you Japanese vs. German from a different time:

Actress Nobu McCarthy perched on the Datsun - this show was the automakers debut in America

The Zundapp (yes the motorcycle manufacturer) easily fits two... or more?

Yesterday, I visited a factory here in Metro Vancouver that designs and manufactures truck and trailer bodies. From movie trailers to fire engines to food trucks. Very neat stuff. Some as small as 8' long, but some as long as 50'! That's a BIG trailer! The yard had 3 main buildings on 3 acres, and almost every inch of the yard and bays were full. Thats-a-lotta-WIP! In fact, it was almost too much WIP. It was really difficult to see what needed to be done next. I'm sure someone who worked there day in and day out could probably see through the maze of half-completed projects. The front end of the flow was pretty quick and efficient, so they were constantly pulling work in to start. The fear of being idle - or seen being idle - perhaps? However the middle was sloooow and lumpy - a lot of customization for each project meant that the middle operations had a high degree of variability - and they were always a step or two behind the rest of the shop.

Really, this time we mean it!

Starting a job is easy, but finishing that job can be really hard. How often have we read a status report showing a task or project or job at 90% done (or as I like to call it "small 'd' done")? And worse, to see the same status week after week?

Just because you can start a job doesn't mean you should.

AMac