HENLEY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION –
MALTA
NEWSLETTER – 19 September 2009
Issue No: 207
A fortnightly newsletter to keep Henley Alumni Association – Malta (HAAM)
members informed with latest management practices and with news and
activities of HAAM.
The contents of this edition are:
Introduction
Management Concepts
Lean Production
Leading Management Thinkers
Michael Dell
Members Section
News from Henley Business School announcement from the Dean
Project Management Course
The Executive Event – 29 September 2009
News from HAAM
Gozo BBQ – see the photos
Future activities
Introduction
This e-Newsletter is designed as a Web page so as to facilitate navigating
through its pages. Using Word for Microsoft 97 or later versions, you should
be able to browse through this document by clicking on the underlined links.
These will take you to the relevant sections of this newsletter and also to
Internet resources. To achieve the latter you would have to be connected to
the Internet.
Your feedback and contribution (for example sending relevant research
papers, Internet sites of interest to Alumni) would be appreciated. E-mail
your feedback or request for further information to the following address:
haam@henleymc.ac.uk
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Management Concepts
This section contains an article on some essential business idea/s. Remind
yourself and get to grips with key management concepts in a language that's
easy to understand.
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Lean Production
During the last forty years, Western auto manufacturers have lurched from
one crisis to another, always a step behind. The company they have been
following is Japanese automotive giant Toyota.
If you go into the Toyota headquarters in Japan, you will find three portraits.
One is of the company's founder; the next is of the company's current
president; and the final one is a portrait of American quality guru W. Edwards
Deming. While Western companies produced gas-guzzling cars with costly,
large, and unhappy workforces in the 1970s, Toyota was forging ahead with
implementation of Deming's ideas. In the early 1980s, Western companies
finally woke up and began to implement Deming's quality gospel. By then it
was too late. Toyota had moved on.
Toyota progressed to what has been labeled lean production, or the Toyota
Production System. The architect of the Toyota Production System is usually
acknowledged as being Taiichi Ohno, who wrote a short book on the Toyota
approach and later became a consultant. From Toyota's point of view, there
was nothing revolutionary in lean production. In fact, lean production was an
integral part of Toyota's commitment to quality and its roots can be traced
back to the 1950s. In 1984, when Toyota opened up a joint venture with
General Motors in California, the West began to wake up and the word began
to spread.
The Toyota Production System was based on three simple principles. The first
was that of just-in-time production. There is no point in producing cars, or
anything else, in blind anticipation of someone buying them. Waste (muda) is
bad. Production must be closely tied to the market's requirements. Second,
responsibility for quality rests with everyone and any quality defects need to
be rectified as soon as they are identified. The third, more elusive, concept
was the “value stream.” Instead of seeing the company as a series of
unrelated products and processes, it should be seen as a continuous and
uniform whole, a stream including suppliers as well as customers.
The concepts were brought to mass Western audiences thanks to work
carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of its
International Motor Vehicle Program. The MIT research took five years,
covered 14 countries, and looked exclusively at the worldwide car industry.
The research concluded that while American car makers remained fixed in the
mass production techniques of the past, Japanese car makers managed to
square the manufacturing circle: management, workers, and suppliers worked
toward the same goals, resulting in increased production, high quality, happy
customers, and lower costs. The research spawned the 1990 best-seller by
James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos, The Machine That Changed
the World. (Womack and Roos were from MIT while Jones was from Cardiff
Business School.)
Lean production became fashionable. As with most management fads, it was
willfully misinterpreted. It became linked to reengineering and, more
worryingly, to downsizing. The reality is that lean production is a highly
effective concept. “Lean production is a superior way for humans to make
things,” Womack, Jones, and Roos argue. They are right. If, as Toyota has
largely done, you get it right, lean production gives the best of every world: the
economies of scale of mass production; the sensitivity to market and
customer needs usually associated with smaller companies; and job
enrichment for employees.
The trouble is that getting it right has proved difficult. In many cases, Western
organizations were so committed to their very different ways of working that
the changes required were impossibly all embracing. But it is not only that
lean production requires large-scale changes in practice and attitude. The
West continues to equate leanness with numbers. Lean production is seen as
a means of squeezing more production from fewer people. This is a
fundamental misunderstanding. Reduced numbers of employees is the end
goal, rather than the means. Western companies have tended to reduce
numbers and then declare themselves lean organizations. This overlooks all
three of the concepts that underlie genuine lean production (just-in-time
manufacturing; responsibility for quality; and the company as value stream).
Womack argues that while lean production requires fewer people, the
organization should then accelerate product development to tap new markets
to keep the people at work.
Lean production has moved the debate about quality forward. It has raised
awareness, provided a new benchmark, and brought operational efficiency to
a wider audience. “Organizations did well to employ the most up-to-date
equipment, information technology, and management techniques to eliminate
waste, defects, and delays,” says Harvard Business School's Michael Porter.
“They did well to operate as close as they could to the productivity frontier.
But while improving operational effectiveness is necessary to achieving
superior profitability, it is not sufficient.”
Key Reading
James Womack and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking. Simon & Schuster, 1996
James Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos. The Machine That Changed the World.
Rawson Associates/Macmillan, 1990
Yasuhiro Monden. Toyota Production System, Institute of Industrial Engineers, 1988
Taiichi Ohno. Toyota Production System. Productivity Press, 1988
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Leading Management Thinkers
This page gives a short profile and backgrounder on the leading management
thinkers, past and present
__________________________________
Michael Dell
Michael Dell (b. 1965) made history when he became the youngest CEO ever
to run a Fortune 500 company. Today he heads one of the most profitable
and innovative businesses in the world. Along the way, he has joined the
ranks of the most revered entrepreneurs in the US as the man who took the
direct-sales model and elevated it to an art form. (In 2003, Dell Computer
came fourth in Fortune’s ranking of America’s Most Admired Companies,
behind Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines and Berkshire Hathaway.)
The company Dell built is not the biggest in the world. Nor are its products the
most innovative. Dell Corporation is that rarity: a corporate model, the
benchmark for how companies can be organized and managed to reap the full
potential of technology. Dell is the Alfred P Sloan of the high-tech age. But
while it took Sloan decades to meld General Motors into his organizational
image, Dell is still a young man.
He started young, too. By the age of 13, he had become a dab hand at taking
apart the motherboard of his Apple II computer. But his interest in business
predated even that. Dinnertime conversations in the Dell household reinforced
it (his mother was a stockbroker). By the age of 16, young Michael was
putting what he’d learned into practice. He has been doing so ever since.
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MEMBERS SECTION
This page is dedicated to the contribution of our members. Members are invited to contribute
to this page by submitting e.g. their own profiles, research studies, job opportunities,
product/service advertisements, etc. All contributions must be in Word 97 format and not
greater than 200K Bytes so as to facilitate distribution through this Newsletter.
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The following is an announcement from Professor Christopher Bones:
HENLEY BUSINESS SCHOOL
We start our second full year as Henley Business School in good shape
having not only managed a complex integration but also having managed to
weather the storms of the global recession. Our financial position at the end of
our first year looks as though it will be broadly on target – a great
achievement by everyone. As for this year, our undergraduate entry looks
very strong, particularly in Economics and in Management and our MSc
pipeline is significantly ahead of last year. On the MBA side we are tracking
ahead of last year and whilst the corporate world is very challenging we have
continued to win 1 out of every 2 bids submitted.
I am now announcing some changes in the Dean’s office that will take effect
during the year. First, in the strategy area, where we are currently appointing
heads of MBA recruitment and HBS marketing; once in place, the recruitment
activity will report to the Head of School of Management and marketing into
the Dean. We have also reduced the number of posts in this structure for
09/10 through not filling vacancies that existed last year.
As a consequence, Professor Stephen Lee has decided to take this
opportunity to move on from Henley Business School and to take on a new
challenge; he will leave us on 31st December. Stephen has played a pivotal
role in the planning, negotiation and implementation of the merger ensuring
we have a powerful visual identity and significantly improved sales
development and marketing activities. Stephen will retain a visiting professor
role at the School and will work with both the MBA and corporate learning
teams in this capacity. I am personally grateful for all of Stephen’s hard work
and I know this appreciation is shared by the Vice Chancellor and his
colleagues.
Secondly, at the end of this academic year (31st July) I will stepping down as
Dean and will be replaced by an external appointment, the process for which
is being launched as you read this note. In my discussions with the ViceChancellor before the merger we have agreed that my time in the role would
be the defined by the challenge to deliver a merged School with a strong
leadership team. After this, we both believe that HBS would really benefit
from a new Dean with no ‘history’ and with new perspectives, who could build
on the foundations of the merger and work with the team to deliver our goals.
We both agreed the end of this academic year was a logical break point.
I have agreed to become a Visiting Professor and I hope that I will be working
with several parts of HBS in this new role. I will continue to be a proud
ambassador for Henley and the University of Reading in whatever I do next –
which is as yet undecided! The Vice-Chancellor has asked me to play a role
in the appointment of a successor and this process is now underway, with the
University using the services of Odgers. Heads of School will be consulted
during this process and if you have views about the role going forward please
let them know.
I felt it best we announced this now so that it was right in the open but, as
such, you are now unlikely to hear any more about an appointment until well
into 2010. In the meantime, let’s get on with making this year even more
successful than the last.
Professor Christopher Bones
Dean
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Last Chance to Book
Events:
25 September 2009 - Henley Golf Challenge. Now in its 4th year this popular
golf event will be held at The Springs Golf Club, Wallingford. £55.00 per
person. Only 3 places remaining. irina.woodford@henley.com
8 October 2009 - London & SE Alumni Group Annual Dinner at the
Athenaeum, London. We will be having a guest speaker, who will be
introduced on the night and are also delighted to announce that Chris Bones
and the alumni team will be joining us as guests. A great opportunity to
network and dine in fine surroundings. Partners and business guests
welcome. Numbers will be limited to 65. Contact:
amanda.proddow@henley.com
02 November 2009 – Pharma Forum Winter Meeting – “Customer Marketing
Challenges in Pharmaceuticals” with Professor Merlin Stone, leading expert
on direct and relationship marketing, customer care, customer loyalty and
customer information systems and speaker at the forthcoming Chartered
Institute of Marketing Annual Conference – at One Alfred Place, Bloomsbury,
London WC1E 7EB. Contact: irina.woodford@henley.com
12 November 2009 - Keynote Lecture Lecture Series 2009 with Ian Powell
Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers on 12th November 2009. Please click
on the link for full details or contact: elizabeth.moxey@henley.com
For details of events organised by our International Alumni Associations please click
here
Warm regards,
The Henley Alumni Team - Chris, Amanda, Irina & Laverne
Henley Business School
Email: alumni@henley.com
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Qualification in Project Management
The following is an advert from a member about a Project Management
Course that is being organising in October. For further details contact
Stephen Axisa of Sanateck Ltd as indicated below:
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is pleased to announce another Event on 29th September, 2009. The three academics conducting the
discussions are Dr. Rose Anne Cuschieri, Dr. David Dingli and Mr. Lorenzo Mule’ Stagno. Matters
pertaining to Strategy, People Management and Marketing are brought to light. The following is the
program of the day:
* subject to change
For participation contact:
Jason Attard
Tel: - 2142 4724
Cell: - 7920 1530
Mail: - jason@the-executive.biz
The Executive Events are organised by
in collaboration with
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NEWS FROM HAAM
Latest news, appointments, events can be found in this page.
Gozo BBQ
18th September 2009
Last Friday’s BBQ by the pool of Cornucopia Hotel was enjoyed by a group of
HAAM members and their partners and families. It was another networking
opportunity for our members in a relaxing atmosphere of good food, live
music, friends and colleagues. Photos below:
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Future Activities
The events sub-committee within your committee is continuing to work on a
program of activities for the rest of the year. These include traditional
activities (Film & Meal, cultural activities) and other more adventurous events
such as Treasure Hunt which is being planned for October. We also strive to
bring you educational activities as opportunities arise.
We look forward to your feedback as this helps us to maintain a strong
network among our members.
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comments
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haam@henleymc.ac.uk
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