A Company In Lean Nation - Vibco Vibrators

There are few CEOs that really understand continuous improvement and lead their company through this journey.

Karl Wadenstein is the CEO of Vibco Vibrators, a company in Wyoming that manufactures industrial vibrators.  Taken from the company website:

"Lean Manufacturing at VIBCO Vibrators is about more than reducing waste and improving processes. It's about doing whatever is necessary to provide our customers with the products and services they want, exactly when they want them.We are proud to manufacture all of our products in the USA at our Wyoming, RI headquarters."

Check out the video section of the Vibco Vibrators Website, to understand their Lean journey and how proud every employee is of it.

Karl is passionate about Lean Manufacturing and continuously promotes Lean ideas through his Lean Nation podcasts, where he interviews top Lean thinkers in the country.

How serious are you about continuous improvement in your company?

Beyond Black Swans - About Fragility

I recently saw a video of Nassim Taleb giving a talk in Princeton, discussing his new ideas about fragility, risk, probabilities and future events.   These ideas are the basis of his upcoming book, Antifragility.

I specially liked the approach he discusses to "predicting" the future. Although the majority of us know that the future can not be predicted, Taleb's approach was to identify the things that would not exist in the future, instead of identifying what things would be there.  For Taleb, things that will not exist in the future have fragility, or have a low probability of withstanding future events.  For example, he predicts that most banks nor the FED will exist in their current form, because of their fragility.

Taleb has always been a controversial speaker, bu his insights from the stock market have helped people in the business world to think about risk in a different way.

How are you protecting yourself from Black Swans?  Are you in a position to benefit from them, in case they appear?

A Bar With Dynamic Pricing

The laws of supply and demand are one of the basic tenets in traditional economics.  In a nutshell, all other things constant:

• If supply stays constant and demand increases, prices will go up.   

• If supply stays constant and demand decreases, prices will go down.

Pretty simple, right?   

Apparently, a bar in California is using these concepts.  Prices for drinks change constantly, based on demand, meaning popular drinks go up in price and unpopular drinks go downs in price.

I have recently been thinking among similar lines about the price model for online media, such as music tracks, movies and others.  For example, should the price of downloading a popular song be the same than an unpopular one?  On the other hand, if a popular song is worth US $3 instead of US $1, what could be the unintended consequences?

Back to the dynamic pricing bar example, I would assume that people would shift to unpopular drinks when the price of popular ones are increased.  But after a few drinks, can someone still control their decisions?


So, can you use a dynamic pricing model based on current demand?  What would be the unintended consequences?

How To Change a Habit Infographic

I recently blogged about Charles Duhigg's methodology for changing habits, to improve the quality of your life.

He recently published an infographic on the changing habits methodology, describing the three simple steps to try to change a habit:

• The cue, or what is the context when the habit is triggered
• The reward, or what the person gains when after performing the habit
• The routine, or the method to replace the reward for the cue

I am a relatively heavy coffee drinker, so I have been applying the three steps to try to shift my coffee drinking to more healthy and natural drinks such as water.   Let's see how it goes.

What habits would you like to change?   Try the method with the habit changing methodology!

Talking About Remarkable - Caine's Arcade

And just when you are wondering why things are so tough in the world, you find the video of Caine's Arcade, describing the project of a 9 year old that wanted to build an arcade out of cardboard boxes in his father's shop.

Check out how Caine controlled the validity of passes with an elegant solution.   Caine's Arcade website posted the objective of raising funds for his college education, and was able to raise $180,000 in less than 10 days through PayPal donations.   Take a look also at Nirvan Mullick, the person who produced the video for Caine's Arcade website, who is also doing some interesting projects to foster entrepreneurship.

Remarkable is scarce, and it boils down to a personal choice and a way of life.

What remarkable project are you embarking on today?

Beyond Maslow: Compensation In The Workplace

Last week I blogged about how to influence people by asking irrational questions.

Maslow was a psychologist of the 20th century that that tried to decipher the science behind human motivation, developing his famous hierarchy of needs.

A key component of motivation in the workplace is compensation.  Logic would tell us that the more compensation, the more motivated your employees will be.   However, modern psychologists like Alfie Kohn have proven this assumption wrong, specially in knowledge related areas.

Dan Pink has also tackled the subject of the relationship between compensation and motivation in the workplace.   In this interview by the Curious Cat Blog, some of the basic ideas behind his book are described, including and how they can be applied at work.

How are you compensating employees today?  How is that working for you?

Bring Out The Tanks

Nothing better than to look at The Oatmeal from time to time to get you thinking on how to do things in a remarkable way.

Are you building cars or tanks?