You cannot copy Lean nor DataOps

You cannot copy Lean nor DataOps

"One General Motors vice president even ordered one of his managers to take pictures of every inch of the NUMMI plant so they could copy it precisely. The result was a factory with andon cords but with nobody pulling them because managers (following the principle of extrinsic motivation) were incentivized by the rate at which automobiles — of any quality — came off the line."

- Lean Enterprise (2014) by Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O'Reilly.

The NUMMI plant was a joint venture between Toyota and GM, operated together. It was the only GM factory where they succeeded to implement the Toyota production system, in spite of many attempts to replicate it. It was not sufficient, and GM filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. 

The quote above appropriately describes adoption of data engineering, DataOps, and the whole process of getting business value from data. The IT industry is full of this GM mentality; companies copy technology stacks, concepts, language, job titles, and the "Spotify model." But the culture, organisation dynamics, and incentives remain. As a freelance consultant, I helped many companies modernise their data processes, and in one case even implement the Spotify model, albeit by accident. At the end of the day, they are always puzzled why they don't achieve the same results as the technical elite.

Scling's business model is the joint operation data factory. It is our mission to bring the power of data and AI to companies beyond big tech, and a joint operation is the only model we believe can achieve efficiency comparable to the most data mature companies. The GM mentality is a difficult obstacle for our model, however — companies that we meet think that they can take pictures, replicate, and quickly build a lean, state of the art data factory. If anyone has ideas how to address this obstacle, I am all ears.

"The US division of GM took about 15 years to decide they needed to seriously prioritize implementing the Toyota production system, and a further 10 years to actually implement it. By this time any competitive advantage they could have gained was lost."

We seek the companies that think 25 years is too long. So far, they have been surprisingly difficult to find.

David Warburton

Program Manager at Medtronic

3 年

That NUMMI plant was eventually closed and sold for pennies on the dollar to an electric car startup called Tesla.

Lars Albertsson

?????? Founder at Scling

3 年

On Twitter, I received a link to this interesting podcast on NUMMI: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 . It is worth a listen. In addition to the organisational aspect, the human aspect and quality of life impact is fascinating.

回复
Lars Albertsson

?????? Founder at Scling

3 年

The quote above is from Lean Enterprise, by Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, and Barry O'Reilly

回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Lars Albertsson的更多文章

  • Three conversations about data

    Three conversations about data

    Like Scrooge, I experienced three conversations before Christmas that left a profound impact, along with the conclusion…

    15 条评论
  • The data divide - data success factors vs friction

    The data divide - data success factors vs friction

    For some time we have witnessed the so-called Data Divide - a wide and growing difference between companies in the…

    3 条评论
  • Celebrations, risks, and spending the time given to us

    Celebrations, risks, and spending the time given to us

    The last two years have been a roller coaster for me. 2022 was, from a professional perspective, both the worst and the…

    8 条评论
  • Volvo Cars and the digital race

    Volvo Cars and the digital race

    I read the morning paper today (some of us still do) and found an interview with Jim Rowan, CEO of Volvo Cars. He says…

    20 条评论
  • Data management as code

    Data management as code

    - "Your business model is interesting. Tell me, how do you handle data management efficiently?" Scling's business model…

    4 条评论
  • The great capability divide

    The great capability divide

    On Monday, I opened the health care application "Alltid ?ppet" ("Always Open"), but it was down due to a rush to get…

    7 条评论
  • The fallacy of the generic AI startup

    The fallacy of the generic AI startup

    In the 2016 book "The Inevitable", Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired, wrote "The business plans of the next 10,000 startups…

    5 条评论
  • What is wrong with Infosec?

    What is wrong with Infosec?

    Why do we still have breaches? What is wrong with infosec? The infosec community is on the wrong side of speed. Let me…

  • An infectious doctor's perspective on COVID-19

    An infectious doctor's perspective on COVID-19

    I usually stick to professional posts, but I'll make an exception for the clearest COVID-19 explanation that I have…

    2 条评论
  • Building data processing pipelines - Jfokus slides

    Building data processing pipelines - Jfokus slides

    2 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了