Lean quotes, 'laws' and Rules of Thumb; let's get a list going! How many can you add to this list?
- 80/20 Pareto Principle - roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
- The most difficult part of a project is the last 10%. The 90-50 project management rule of thumb comes into effect when you have completed 90% of the project leaving only 50% left to complete.
- "Measure twice, cut once" - master carpenter Norm Abrams.
- Read an important e-mail at least twice, then answer once.
- "The total work content - that is the operator time required to process one piece from start to finish - should not vary by more than about 30% between the different end items processed in the cell, especially when a moving conveyor is used." - Creating Continuous Flow by Mike Rother and Rick Harris.
- Adding manpower to a late project always makes it later.
- "We have two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk the less." - Epictetus, a Greek-born Roman slave and Stoic philosopher (55–135 A.D.)
- Do as little QA as possible and no less.
- "A place for everything, and everything in its place."
- Staff the KPO with 1% of total headcount.
- Anyone should be able to walk into a workplace and identify the flow of work being done within 60 seconds.
- A good estimate of the standard deviation of a set of measurements is (max - min)/6.
- "You can't manage what you can't measure."
- "Don't just do something, stand there."
- Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. - Cyril Northcote Parkinson, 1955 (generalized and extended - The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource. And. The reverse is not true.)
From David Cowburn
- Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse
- Nothing is as easy as it looks, everything takes longer than you think
- If there is the possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one
- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw
- Every solution breeds new problems
- It is impossible to make anything fool proof, because fools are so clever
- By making things absolutely clear, people will become confused
- If there is a 50 per cent chance of success, that means there is a 75 per cent chance of failure
- Interchangeable parts won’t
- In any computation, the figure that is obviously correct will be the source of error
- Murphy was an optimist!