The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Quotes

• "The way mental models shape our perceptions is no less important in management. I will never forget visiting with a group of Detroit auto executives after their first factory visits to Japan over twenty years ago. This was right around the time that US automakers were finally waking up to the fact that Japan was steadily gaining market and profit share in their industry—and it might be attributed to how they managed, not just because they had “cheap” labor or protected home markets.
  A little way into the conversation, it was clear that the Detroit executives were unimpressed. I asked why and one said, “They didn’t show us real plants.” When I inquired as to what he meant by this, he responded “There were no inventories in any of the plants. I’ve been in manufacturing operations for almost thirty years and I can tell you those were not real plants. They had clearly been staged for our tour.” Today we all know that they were indeed real plants, examples of the “Just-in-time” inventory systems that the Japanese had been working on for many years that dramatically reduced the need for in-process inventories throughout the manufacturing system."

  • Tags: [mental-models, conceptions, japan, just-in-time]