Page 120 - Built Expressions - Online Construction Magazine - November 2014 Issue

Managing The Mindset big data analysis of historical patterns. He drew upon an analogy—the U.S. supermarket—to inform his intuition that the current system of “pushing” automobiles through mass production imposed ineffciencies that could be eliminated through a “pull system” producing cars in lot sizes of one. In bbcimg.co.uk paradigm was impossible. Optimal lot fact, analysis would have suggested his sizes were defned by the changeover time of equipment, making a lot size of one infeasible because the huge presses in automotive manufacturing required 12-hour changeovers. Undeterred, Ohno sent his top not even in that central tool of the industrial engineer, Shigeo Shingo, MBA: the net present value calculation. to benchmark the best in the world. At the same time, managers can’t run Shingo learned that Volkswagen set a company based on a set of untested the benchmark at six hours, but by hypotheses: The right business strategy incorporating other observations he requires creativity and analysis. managed to reduce Toyota’s press The best managers use their changeover time by 67% to four hours. intuition to form hypotheses based on Unimpressed, Ohno pushed Shingo a belief about why something occurs, to make changeovers in less than 10 news.bbcimg.co.uk correlation. We uncover novel to justify such a target but because not just based on data demonstrating minutes, not because he had data patterns by hypothesizing root causes, the approach he envisioned, which effectively tapping strategic models to would become lean manufacturing, explain why a particular pattern might demanded it. emerge. Those strategies need to be That extreme target forced Shingo to explicitly articulated and tested before fundamentally rethink the production pursuing action. As social psychologist process, and by doing so he broke the standard model of quantum physics. Kurt Lewin proclaimed, “There’s key constraint to achieving Ohno’s Management, on the other hand, nothing so practical as a good theory.” vision. Today, manufacturing managers doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying Computers can analyze massive routinely dismiss the simplistic notions about how things came to be and quantities of data and discover patterns of “mass production,” and the world doesn’t have the luxury of performing by drawing on inferential statistics. But benefts from higher quality at lower controlled experiments. A business even big data computers don’t form cost, thanks to the creativity of Ohno strategy offers the managerial the hypotheses needed to develop new and Shingo. equivalent of a scientifc theory. strategies designed to break existing More recently, Blake Mycoskie Managers need to develop hypotheses constraints and create new business of Toms Shoes sought to break the of what will work in the future in models. Accordingly, managers who traditional constraint of Carnegie’s order to set the company’s current seek to break constraints and embrace gospel of wealth. Rather than strategic direction. Instead of simply a hypothesis driven approach will not turning to philanthropy only after testing hypotheses, management must face extinction but will instead create achieving fnancial success, Mycoskie create the future. The future can’t be the future. integrated it into his entrepreneurial created (or even uncovered) by simply business model. During a vacation examining the past, even with the Breaking Constraints in Argentina in 2006, he noticed a massive computer power employed Consider the case of Taiichi Ohno, the local style of canvas slip-ons called in “big data” analyses. The strategic father of the Toyota production system. alpargatas, which he began to wear. answer can’t be found in the numbers, He didn’t infer his new paradigm from a During that same trip, he spent PG 120 Built Expressions Vol: 3 Issue: 11 November 2014