Journal of a production scheduler kaizen consultant

Welcome to another episode from my editorial diary. Those of you who visit our site regularly will have noticed that we've added two new categories to the top page, the first of which is for interviews. Although I may not be an expert in lean manufacturing myself (not yet anyway) the least I can do is go and interview some people who are and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet Professor Yasuhiro Monden last week.

Professor Yasuhiro Monden is world famous for his excellent book Toyota Production System. Unfortunately, the English version of this book is no longer in print although you can still pick up some second-hand copies on such sites as amazon.com etc. However, the good news is that he is currently in negotiations to have the book published again and I'll keep you updated on that as soon as I get the details. In the meanwhile, Professor Yasuhiro Monden has made time in his busy schedule to allow LMJ a series of interviews covering his ground breaking research on the TPS, which hopefully I'll be able to start posting soon.

Lean Manufacturing Japan's Head Office This week there was just a long enough break in the rain to take a snap of LMG's editorial office, which despite the wet weather isn't any cleaner. I'm lucky to have an office on the 9th floor with a great view and we have some pretty good sunsets over Tokyo. When the rainy season is over I'll try and get a photo of that as well. As you can imagine tall thin buildings tend to get a little wobbly when we have an earthquake, which isn't helped by being on the top floor either, but least all my books have stayed on the shelf so far.

On my regular long hikes across the web in search of entertainment and enlightenment I occasionally come across a site of interest. Now that I have my own blog here I'll introduce you to some of my discoveries if and when they are related to the world of manufacturing.

Anyway, one new site I found was by a Japanese gentlemen living in Thailand. He's started his own software company in Bangkok and he has his own blog (called View point of a Japanese in Bangkok Thailand), which you can see in English. The address is:

http://jpbangkok.blogspot.com/

Apparantly there are 50,000 Japanese people living in Thailand and about 50% of the manufacturing companies in Thailand have capital from Japan so it's not surprising that a large number of these Japanese are working in the manufacturing industry. If you would like to get an insight behind one of these Japanese then you might enjoy checking this blog out occasionally.

By Warren