Improvement Versus Innovation

Does success breed success? Kaizen is a Japanese word for improvement. In manufacturing circles kaizen is used to describe continuous improvement – constantly refining processes to improve the quality of the outcome. In an earlier article I made the point that the small batches forced by limited manufacturing might created an opportunity for Japanese manufacturers…

Amazon and Amazon Web Services

In 2016, Amazon.com made more money from AWS, Amazon Web Services than from retail sales. Jeff Bezos approved the idea of experimenting with Amazon infrastructure in 2004, but AWS only became commercially available in 2006. In many ways, AWS is a refinement of the infrastructure that Amazon built for its own operations. Principle 6 –…

Deming, Quality and the 40 Principles

W. Edwards Deming is a giant figure in the realm of quality management. In the aftermath of the second world war, Japanese companies turned to Deming, an industrial expert, for his input on creating top quality products. These same companies, including Toyota and Sony, rebuilt the Japanese economy and became global competitors, besting many American…