Anatomy of a Trend Review

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Anatomy of a Trend ReviewThis concise book is superior to Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller, The Tipping Point. Gladwell's popular book was based on an appealingly superficial premise: that a trend spreads like a disease, multiplying geometrically until it reaches a population "tipping point," whereafter it increases to epidemic proportions. While that handy metaphor describes how a trend spreads, it doesn't really explain why, nor does it explain why one phenomenon becomes an enduring trend while another becomes just a mere short-lived fad. Unlike Gladwell, who is a journalist, Vejlgaard is a trained social scientist. Like an epidemiologist, he examines modern trends under a microscope, discovering the source of their unique power. He detects, moreover, a traceable and predictable pattern that all true trends tend to follow. An especially valuable book for professionals in advertising, marketing, and product development, and for all the rest of us who want to better understand the material forces that shape our lives.
Stephen Bertman, author, Hyperculture: The Human Cost of SpeedAnatomy of a Trend Overview

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Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products Review

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Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products ReviewThis book goes on the shelf right by Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, and Gary Hamel's Leading the Revolution. But of the three, Hauptly's Something Really New might be the best, and certainly will be the most useful.
Innovation books frequently are written by business school professors about their clients. This leads to books that are heavy on theory, and inadequately critical of their subjects.
Hauptly's book is like other Innovation books in that it is concise, readable, and filled with helpful illustrative examples. But the effect is entirely different when the author is an actual Innovator writing for other Innovators about how to Innovate, rather than a color commentator describing action on a distant field.
Gone from Hauptly's account are the fawning success stories. Gone are the complex theories and graphs. Gone even are the unrealistically simple formulas that turn into traps when you try to do it in the real world (think Anthony Ulwick's What Customers Want). What remains is practical advice about how to innovate and how to avoid false innovation.
Hauptly takes us into mind of the Innovator like no other book I have read (even more than Joel Barker's classic, The Business of Paradigms). Not only does Hauptly pave the road for aspiring Innovators, but perhaps more importantly he sets out all the warning signs and side-markers to help avoid common psychological traps. Hauptly takes equal care to explain what is NOT an innovation, which in the real world may be the more vexing problem.
Something Really New is actually two books in one. Although Part One will stand as a major contribution to the literature simply by offering the first true Innovator's Deskbook, I was equally impressed by Part Two, which covers the people issues, organization, and culture of innovation. Where other books dance around these sensitive political issues, Hauptly is direct and pragmatic about how and where innovation can occur, who does it, who stops it, and how.
The book's chat-over-lunch tone and brain-teaser exercises are a sleight-of-hand that will lull some readers into thinking that the book lacks depth. However, the careful eye will note where the conceptual framework shows through (page 81 cannot resist a 2x2 grid; page 107 introduces the phrase "functional contiguity," and of course the concept of net utility is actually dynamite in the presence of false innovation).
The book will be least interesting to academics seeking theoretical exposition, and least welcome by senior executives who would cheer lead for innovation without actually aligning the organization and doing the work. For them, this book offers little.
But as a no-nonsense player's guide to the game, Something Really New is in a league of its own. It will be read by aspiring and experienced product development staff in all industries. Some of the concepts Hauptly introduces, like mutations, net utility, and task linking, may enter the popular lexicon of innovation. But the book is most to likely win the hearts of product developers working in the trenches, among whom word will spread of the brightest light yet shone on a notoriously dark terrain.Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products Overview

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Toyota Supply Chain Management: A Strategic Approach to Toyota's Renowned System Review

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Toyota Supply Chain Management: A Strategic Approach to Toyota's Renowned System ReviewThe authors use "Toyota's Supply Chain Management" to explain how Toyota implements its Toyota Production System in automobile manufacture. Variety is chosen carefully to balance market demands and operational efficiency. Reducing variability enables all of the supply chain flows to operate with low levels of inventory. Visibility ensures that bottlenecks are noted and responses immediate. Toyota performance metrics have a 50% weight for results and a 50% weight for process compliance. Flexibility is emphasized throughout.
One approach used at Toyota to reduce build combinations is to include many standard equipment options, based on the model selected. Rental sales volume allows automakers to fill in demand valleys during the year. North American production for Toyota is typically allocated and assigned to dealers 2-4 weeks prior to production. Some accessories can be added in the marshaling yard.
Overseas production distribution for North America takes 3 - 5 weeks to get to American ports, another 2-7 days to get to the dealers. Vehicles are first allocated to a required area prior to being loaded onto the ships (different ships go to different ports - Portland, Long Beach, Houston, Jacksonville, and Newark), then allocated and assigned to dealers in transit to the port.
Tier 1 suppliers make parts and ship directly to the assembly plants; Tier 2 link to Tier 1, etc. Toyota takes charge of pickup and transportation of parts from suppliers to plants - routes are designed for parts to be picked up from multiple suppliers for multiple plants and delivered to regional cross-dock operations. To ensure that both trucking and rail companies have adequate capacity, day-to-day forecasts of volume by destination are provided.
Dealer allocation occurs twice each month, 4-5 weeks prior to the scheduled build dates. Vehicles for the day are pre-sequenced so that vehicles high extra workloads (eg. sunroofs) are not scheduled back to back. A plant's freeze point ranges from 5-10 days out, selected so 80% of supplies arrive within that point. Line speed changes with 1-2 months lead time. Flexibility is improved by purchasing option-related parts from suppliers located closer to the assembly plant.
Complexity reduction is achieved through parts commonality, making high-volume options standard, eliminating options that don't sell well, designing accessories that can be installed after the vehicle leaves the factory, limiting product offering within a market area - eg. stick shifts sell well in Europe but not the U.S., combining related options into related packages (eg. safety) - these actions also simplify buying and retail stocking.
Most Toyota plants employ some percentage of temporary workers to support normal production; if demand slows they can be reduced. The percent of time production is planned for normal rate is usually set at less than 100% to allow stopping for quality problems. (Lines are stopped about 5,000 times/day in Toyota's Kentucky plant.) Fast die changes are another source of flexibility, body-shop robots have flexibility to handle different models, painting occurs in small batches to limit nozzle cleaning (emits pollutants). Less than ten out of 353 assembly steps use sequence suppliers (eg. seats). Workers rotate tasks every two yours to reduce monotony and to use different muscle sets. Of the 20 hours required to make a car, about 9 are spent in the paint shop.
Suppliers rank Original Equipment Manufacturers on 17 criteria, including trust, timely information, degree of help to decrease costs - Toyota is highest (407) vs. G.M. (lowest at 131). G.M. has a 5X (highest) emphasis on cost reduction vs. quality, Honda and Toyota the lowest at 1.7X. Toyota has a higher number of engineers helping suppliers and vice-versa (re design) than others.
In Japan, 85% of volume comes from suppliers within 50-miles (one hour) radius; in North America the goal is for 80% parts delivered within 3-5 days lead time. Suppliers have to share ideas with other suppliers making the same item.
Toyota's promotion costs for cars are less than $700/vehicle, vs. over $2,500 for others. In a crisis (eg. dock strike, single supplier problem), someone is assigned ownership of the problem so things don't slip between the cracks.Toyota Supply Chain Management: A Strategic Approach to Toyota's Renowned System Overview

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