Tag: Tesla

Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this... there's always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get...

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #450 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor Torbjorn Netland, Ph.D....

My guest for Episode #345 is Edward Niedermeyer, author of the newly released book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors. It's available now through Amazon and other...

Jamie Flinchbaugh and I had a great time with the first two episodes of "Lean Whiskey." Thanks to everyone who has subscribed, rated, and...

Hat tip to Stan Feingold from StoreSMART (a Lean Blog sponsor) for sending me this article: Bob Lutz Talks Panel Gaps, Tesla, and Why Every...

Mark's Note: I've known Ryan McCormack for many years now, thanks to his previous work in Lean healthcare and his attendance at Lean Healthcare...

The first thing that prompted me to write this post is an interesting article about Toyota and their Georgetown, Kentucky plant that's known as TMMK (via Ward's Auto): "New Lexus Big Test for Toyota’s Georgetown Plant and Its New Manager" How does their approach and mindset seem to differ from Tesla?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been quoted as saying he will "school Toyota on Lean manufacturing." OK, let's take inspiration and lessons from the apparent Tesla Way management system. What would happen if hospitals and other organizations tried emulating Tesla instead of Toyota? What are the methods and mindsets? The behaviors and principles? What's the management approach and culture?

Again, Tesla and their CEO Elon Musk are generating a lot of news and, I think, many things to think about, even if the lessons learned are, perhaps, about things NOT to do in our organizations. See previous posts about Tesla As you might know, Tesla has been very much behind schedule with their Model 3 production ramp up. Last week, we saw news stories about a production shutdown that's intended to get things back on track: "Tesla Is Temporarily Shutting Down Model 3 Production. Again." Are short-term layoffs the best thing to do for the long term?

Over the past month, there's been so much in the news about Tesla. This column from Joann Muller, who covers the auto industry for Forbes, caught my eye again recently: "Musk Thinks Tesla Will School Toyota On Lean Manufacturing; Fixing Model 3 Launch Would Be A Start" It's not a direct quote (I don't think) from CEO Elon Musk that they will "school" Toyota on Lean manufacturing. I'd suggest there's little evidence that Musk and Elon are even really trying Lean manufacturing as a strategy or a mindset. He's doing his own thing and will sink or swim accordingly.

There's a lot to admire about Elon Musk. I admire his risk taking and his entrepreneurial spirit. I use PayPal a lot (one of his early companies) and I admire the innovation of Tesla and SpaceX. But, I question how much Musk and Tesla have been willing to learn from Toyota or people like Paul O'Neill.

Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"