My youngest just commented on how tough it must be to have a February 29th birthday.  Indeed.  As Lean expert John Shook just reminded everyone, today would have been Taiichi Ohno's birthday. Another interesting fact?  The primary developer of the Toyota Production System was born in....China?

The most popular piece of content on PharmaManufacturing.com for the past month or so has been "Pfizer Reinvents Lean in the Lab," an in-depth look at how the QA/QC labs in the company's Grange Castle, Ireland, site, have revamped and "Leaned" their work habits.

Cautionary tale for execs in pharma (or any industry) on the limits of "doing more with less," ignoring technical operations and focusing on financial balance sheets at the expense of quality and safety.   Frontline's documentary on the BP disaster and Texas City refinery tragedy.

AMS

Did any of you catch that recent WSJ report on the negative impact of mass layoffs? OK, I know that M&A layoffs are different, but today brought the sad news that Pfizer/Wyeth will lay off 6,000 employees and close eight of its manufacturing plants in Ireland, Puerto Rico and the U.S.

Want to make yourself indispensible, within pharma or other industries?  This just in from Quality Digest.

AMS

Recent postings in the WSJ blog and elsewhere have asked the troubling question: Does Lean Manufacturing, by definition, lead to quality control problems? Click here for an interesting read. (For something that doesn't require registration, click here.)

It's quite common for drug manufacturers to borrow ideas and technologies from the automotive industry, and even to poach a few talented professionals now and then.

Everyone keeps talking about how the industry is on the brink of great change….it’s the death of the blockbuster….the birth of…what?  The niche-buster? Personalized medicine? 

Just keeping up and fire-fighting may be difficult enough so it is tempting to be like Scarlet O’Hara, as in “we’ll just deal with those issues tomorrow.” 

Every so often, one gets a major reminder of the strategic importance of manufacturing and the largely invisible "CGMP set" to the drug industry and, yes, its bottom line. Former FDA chief Mark McClellan gave pharma a good one years ago with his famous "potato chips and soap flakes"  comment, immortalized in a Wall Street Journal piece. Typically, manufacturing continues to be thought of something that will get done....quietly, invisibly, wherever and by whomever.

In a sad turning point in Toyota's history, and, perhaps the whole history of the Lean movement, Toyota  plans to liquidate the Lean showcase NUMMI plant in Fremont, California "by the end of August." Read more from yesterday's story in the San Francisco Business News.