According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.

The method of A3, which originated in the framework of the Toyota Production System, is used for collaborative problem solving, status reporting,and presenting proposals. It is now widely used as a part of the implementation of lean in different industries. In turn, the Canvas method was initially developed, through academic research, for generating business models, but over time it has been generalised for many other situations. In subsequent research, design principles for Canvases have been developed. The use of the Canvas method has rapidly increased in practice .As these two methods seem to have similarities regarding application areas and working principles, it is of interest to compare them. The following questions are addressed: How are these two methods similar and dissimilar? Are there underlying theories that could shed new light on both methods? A better understanding of these methods, both theoretically and practically, might be beneficial for their use in different contexts and scenarios. Especially, enhanced mastery of these methods would be instrumental for collaborative resolution of the well-known problems in construction.

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Comparing the Methods of A3 and Canvas

One major reason for the poor performance of construction project delivery is related to the 'ill'-performed project definition stage. The emphasis on rational decision-making and methods have stifled the creativity important to problem structuring and solution generation. Problem is in the poor conceptualization of the project definition stage in construction. Taking the design literature as starting point, the intent here is to clarify the underlying concepts and principles related to project definition stage, and propose a simplified prescriptive framework for the project definition stage.

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A new framework for construction project definition stage

Building project delivery is beset with many long-standing problems. Often, these problems, resulting in failures of facilities and cost-time overruns, are directly related to poor design and design management practices. This motivated the definition of the main aim to develop an initial framing for the design process support systems, incorporating ideas from the human error and performance management domains, and on checklists. In this conceptual paper, a literature review method is used. It is suggested that cognitive systems engineering could be used to conceptualize the designers work and to incorporate checklists into the design process. Then, key aspects and elements for the development of design process support systems are addressed.

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From Checklists to Design Process Support Systems: Initial Framing

The KanBIMTM system is designed to support lean work flow control on construction sites. It facilitates short-term work planning and monitoring, providing clear visualization of the maturity of tasks planned and the status of work under way. The goal of the KanBIM research is to determine whether a BIM based workflow information system can help construction personnel implement lean pull flow strategies. An early prototype of system, with field reporting interfaces, a central database and a building information model, was implemented and tested on a large residential construction site. Although PPC and other results were measured, the main significance of the results lie in the site personnel’s positive experience with the system and their observations of the ways in which it could influence the behaviour and productivity of crews. These included recognition of the strong impact the system had in encouraging well-informed discussion and negotiation between crews concerning coordination of their work. The participants identified specific benefits a full implementation could bring to subcontractor trade managers, superintendents and various project management functions.

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Field Tests of the Kanbim™ Lean Production Management System

Delivering better products with a reduced lead time and less resources has become the primary focus of design management. The aim of this work is to revisit typical design management inefficiencies and discuss possible remedies for these problems. To this end, a case study and interviews with seven Estonian architects were carried out. The data obtained was analyzed within the framework of the transformation-flow-value theory of production. Despite its failure to deliver customer value, a single-minded transformation view of operations has been the dominant approach taken in design management and processes, leading to inefficiencies in design practices.

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Ergo Pikas

Papers

Comparing the Methods of A3 and Canvas

A new framework for construction project definition stage

From Checklists to Design Process Support Systems: Initial Framing

Field Tests of the Kanbim™ Lean Production Management System

Case study on design management: Inefficiencies and possible remedies