Building the Fit Organization: Six Core Principles for Making Your Company Stronger, Faster, and More Competitive

APPENDIX 2Resources

I’ve held off from sharing specific tools with you until this final appendix for a reason: deploying tools without embracing the underlying principles is a waste of time, effort, and money.

Take the case of General Motors. In the 1990s, it attempted to use the remarkable performance at NUMMI, its joint venture with Toyota, to improve its other plants. A VP ordered a lower-level manager to make his plant look exactly like the NUMMI plant by taking photos and copying every square inch of the factory. Not surprisingly, the attempt failed miserably, because the manager could only copy the tools, not the underlying principles. The most egregious example of this misunderstanding was the “andon” cord. At NUMMI, pulling this cord ...