Professor Elam

Alert student John Hunter made this post linking  to Dr. Deming. Take a look, clearly Deming’s ideas are alive and well. This makes it clear that his ideas spawned the whole CQM SIx SIgma Toyta Production Lean Management culture. As one who has lived throught the decades of GM and Ford losing leadership, it is oh so ironic to see Toyota employing Americans to beat Ford and GM at their own game. GM as Jerry Flint notes seems to have a plan and the new Malibu is getting rave reviews even compared to Honda and Toyota.  Ford does not seem to have a new winner car model and is still trumpeting the F 150, has anyone noticed the light truck and SUV inventory piling up on the Big Three lots?

While Toyota will never admit it, I always thought their move to buid the big Tundra was a strategic mistake. Now they are having to offer Tundra discounts and sales have not hit their mark, hello $3 gas. I would have left the big pickups to the Big Three instead concentrating on the smaller ones, Nissan and Toyota pretty much have all that market. Instead they should be working on what they do best, economical cars.   But speaking of goes around comes around, the new Accord and Camry weigh a porky 3,500 pounds.  No wonder KIA found a niche. This cycle of a company finding a niche and then becoming the very thing they sought to avoid, never seems to fade.  One could argue that KIA or Hyundai is becoming a value leader while the new Big Three are Toyota NIssan Honda. For example, how many of you bet on the N Y Giants?

We see plenty of them but how many Americans really need a Ford F 450 that hauls / pulls 24,000 pounds?

Has anyone noticed that the Jerry Jones F 450 pickup in the tv ad has an empty bed?  Now there is symbolism for you!