Compression: Meeting the Challenges of Sustainability Through Vigorous Learning Enterprises | Date: 28 April 2011, 04:14
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Compression: Meeting the Challenges of Sustainability Through Vigorous Learning Enterprises
By Robert W. Hall
* Publisher: Productivity Press
* Number Of Pages: 280
* Publication Date: 2009-10-08
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1439806543
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781439806548
Product Description:
Shows us how to learn to learn more effectively both as individuals and organizations, and in terms of processes. This title invites us to rethink our perpetual devotion to old ideals and welcome the shift in thinking that must be our first and immediate step.
Introduction
For a long time I was unsure whether this book should be published.
Compression is a very different kind of world coming soon—in a year or
two to a decade or two. Most of us prefer to ignore the signs of its coming,
but the sooner each of us personally puts aside quiet time to think through
Compression and its challenges, the better. The subject is too big and fragmented
to digest in a single sitting; most of us must mull its implications
for years to form the semblance of a cohesive pattern. The writing builds
slowly, like my slow conversion from expansionist business thinking to
the realization that it is leading us to oblivion. Some of the writing will
seem strident, radical—whatever—to those convinced that expansion has
no limit, but many points were impossible to make when sugar-coated.
Compression is far too big and dynamic a subject for a book. It can never
be completed, and the thinking is systemic. A book format forces presentation
to be linear, and can’t pack an infinite subject into a finite message.
Much is not included. Some “good stuff” is in chapter endnotes (please read
them, too), but further evidence and reasoning suggested by many endnotes
became too voluminous to print. Please visit the extended footnotes at http://
www.productivitypress.com/compression/footnotes.pdf. Please do your
own thinking and help add to this story—or better yet, become part of it.
Compression proposes a bottom-up revolution by working organizations
and the people in them on whom everyone’s quality of life depends. This
book is dedicated to these people. They design, build, and maintain buildings,
roads, sanitation systems, communications systems, vehicles, electrical power
systems, and much more. They extract and refine fuels and minerals. They
attempt to prevent illness, but they will care for the sick and heal them when
they can. They answer the call in case of fire, accident, and disorder. They
grow and prepare food. They teach and mentor the young. They adjudicate
disputes. They keep things clean. They research the global environment. They
discover how things work, how they can work better, and how we can keep
from killing ourselves.
Almost none of us has time to give them much thought, and so they continue
to be underappreciated until performance during a crisis reveals just
how important they are. They assume true responsibility. And they need a
revolution of the systems by which they discharge those responsibilities.
Contents
Acknowledgments..................................................................................ix
Introduction............................................................................................xi
Chapter 1 Understanding the Challenges of Compression............... 1
. Challenge #1: Resource Shortages..............................................3
. Fossil Energy......................................................................3
. Fresh Water.........................................................................6
. Challenge #2: A Precarious Environment................................9
. Honeybees.........................................................................12
. Freon and the Ozone Hole.............................................13
. Oceanic Plankton............................................................14
. Challenge #3: Excessive Consumption....................................16
. Challenge #4: Pushback from the Have-Nots.........................24
. Challenge #5: Self-Learning Work Organizations.................32
. Meeting the Challenges............................................................ 34
. Vigorous Learning Organizations................................35
. Health Care as an Example............................................36
. Rethinking Expansionary Assumptions......................36
. Taking on the Challenges of Compression.............................38
. Endnotes......................................................................................39
Chapter 2 Learning from Toyota....................................................... 45
. The Toyota Way......................................................................... 46
. The Toyota Production System.................................................47
. TPS Techniques................................................................47
. Objective of TPS: Eliminate Waste...............................49
. Creating a TPS Learning System...................................51
. The Role of Standard Work in Kaizen..........................52
. The Seedbed: An Economic Microcosm................................ 56
. Ohno’s Method...........................................................................58
. Toyota’s Supplier Association.................................................. 60
The Toyota Product Development System..............................61
. Expert Engineering Workforce.................................... 64
. Responsibility-Based System......................................... 64
. Set-Based Engineering................................................... 64
. The Chief Engineer..........................................................65
. Ethnic Culture and The Toyota Way.......................................65
. Lean Manufacturing...................................................... 68
. Learning and Work Culture...........................................71
. Lessons from Toyota Today......................................................77
. Endnotes......................................................................................79
Chapter 3 Learning to Learn............................................................. 81
. Improving Your Learning Processes.......................................82
. Part 1: Individual Learning.......................................................83
. Neural Learning Mechanisms.......................................83
. “Natural” Learning.........................................................85
. The Limits of Rationality...........................................................87
. Integrative Learning........................................................89
. Absolutism and Denial.................................................. 90
. Part 2: Compression of Process Learning...............................91
. A Broader Definition of Waste......................................92
. Big-Step Innovative Learning........................................94
. The Implications of Learning Curves...........................95
. Compression and Increasing Complexity....................98
. Energy, Information, and Process Learning................99
. A Tree Doesn’t Grow to the Moon............................. 101
. Scientific Learning........................................................ 103
. Self-Similar Scientific Process Learning
at Work........................................................................... 106
. Broadening Your View of Waste................................ 109
. Mapping Your Opportunities..................................... 112
. Life-Cycle Analysis....................................................... 114
. Practicalities of Measurement.................................... 115
. Action Steps to Start Learning.....................................11
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