William of Ockham is famous for his insight that "the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one". This maxim is known as "Ockham's Razor." While business leaders for generations have addressed issues by using lean production techniques and simple, clear management and strategy formation, we have seen a proliferation of increasingly complex solutions to public problems, especially in the nation's capital.
Take, for example, health care. While the U.S. system of delivering and paying for health is in dire need of revamping, it is more likely than not that the 2,600 pages of federal legislation on the table in mid-January would only exacerbate the problem. Few can predict how the reform proposals would work in practice, but few doubt that it would lead to a proliferation of new public and private rules that would expand complexity by several orders of magnitude.
Thomas Duesterberg in Industry Week
Kris Bledowski, Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Economist, presents the February 2010 Economic Update titled, Global Labor Trends—What They Tell Us About Manufacturing Recovery. Kris begins his audiovisual report by discussing Asian, North American and European current employment trends. He looks at unit labor costs for various countries in order to detect gains in competitiveness among nations. Dr. Bledowski observes that the manufacturing industry seems to have controlled its labor costs very well compared to its international competitors and therefore has strong fundamentals entering the recovery phase of this cycle.
This audiovisual presentation runs about 10 minutes
"One of the lessons coming out of Toyota is that you don't want to get sloppy with good production techniques just because you are growing too fast," said Cliff Waldman, an economist for Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an Arlington, Va.-based group that provides economic research to the manufacturing industry.
Waldman added that the carmaker had several problems, including a culture of secrecy and a company growing too big and too fast without the proper checks in place.
From speaking with manufacturers, Waldman said overall Toyota's lean philosophy has continued to be well regarded as a model to follow.
"The Toyota crisis is more the function of Toyota itself rather than the lean production techniques they are a forerunner of," said Waldman, adding that manufacturers have increasingly turned to lean techniques to give them an edge amid fierce competition in world markets.