Thin Air: How Wireless Technology Supports Lean ... - Prepaid MVNO

xiv • Introduction—The Confusion of the Tongues
As a whole, though, the Wireless camp has never heard of kanban, Âkaizen
(which engages those who use a process to improve and standardize it),
or poka-yoke (the practice of mistake-proofing a process). It’s not that the
Wireless camp disapproves, but approaches those challenges differently. For
example, although they don’t call it poka-yoke, Alameda County in California
uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to Âmistake-proof the
collection of polling equipment (and, subsequently, votes).
The Lean camp tends to hold fast to its commitment to “rules, not
tools”—that is to say, process improvements over technology—in continuous
improvement. In practice, Lean practitioners are not averse to tools;
electronic kanban or eKanban is emerging as a norm. But these experts
as a whole do not partner with technology providers, nor do they involve
themselves in technology implementations. In essence, they help to create
a system and culture of continuous improvement, then move on to the
next engagement. But of course, the need for improvement never ceases; it
just moves around the enterprise.
The list of Wireless technology providers is growing, and includes equipment
providers such as Motorola, system integrators such as Rush Tracking
Systems, and enterprise companies such as SAP. Lean consultants have
partners of their own, but the two camps (Wireless and Lean consultants)
have no partnerships between them. Despite the fact that both camps are
accomplished in enabling enterprises to improve operations and profit, neither
particularly understands nor trusts the other’s school of thought.
This is a shame, because the two camps have the same objectives (to
remove waste, to standardize processes, to reduce costs, etc.) and each has
proven methodologies to achieve those objectives. But neither approach
is enough by itself: Ford, for example, is an absolute champion of automated
process efficiency (using RFID in particular), and Toyota pioneered
Âcontinuous improvement, but neither weathered the 2009 recession particularly
well. Companies that went gung-ho for Six Sigma found themselves
hard pressed to make the extensive measurements required by
Six Sigma, and Six Sigma supposedly stifled innovation at 3M. Without
the automated measurement that Wireless technologies provide, Six
Sigma was simply impractical. The combined value proposition of Lean
(or continuous improvement) and Wireless is greater than each by itself.
In this book, we propose some practices and paradigms that create that
single, stronger value proposition, marrying these two methodologies.
This calls for a common language.