My fiance and I live in Austin, TX and until recently we had two cars. Since I work from home, my car usually sat idle most days which was a huge waste… furthermore it needed maintenance often since it was an old car.  My cost / mile was pretty bad. I recently got rid of

Mature eco-systems are not created overnight.  Energy hungry weeds will quickly cover the bare soil. Overtime, more efficient and diverse plant life emerges. Our global economy is very much like this. Unlike Native the American history of living in harmony with nature, when Europeans first colonized the Americas, they quickly and thinly spread across the

Placing carbon footprint labels on consumable products are a growing trend.  In fact in the UK, Tesco, a large supermarket chain, plans to put these labels on all of their 70,000 products.  Is this a fad or are carbon footprint labels here to stay? Carbon footprint labels started in 2007.  They first appeared on potato

  Fossil records indicate that humans have only been present on Earth for less than 1% of 1% of the Earth’s existence.  This equates to about 10,000 years and is referred to as the Holocene age. The Holocene era is notable for the wide spreading of mammals (particularly Humans) and flowering plants. Despite the relatively

This week the Pentagon estimated that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet fleet would cost  over $1 trillion over the lifetime of the program. Quick facts about the JSF program: The total cost of one of these aircraft is about $113 million F-35 costs 33% more per fight hour than the already expensive F-16 or

In the 1890′s “process improvement systems” were really beginning to attract a lot of attention. Taylorism used harsh tactics included setting unreasonable production targets based on questionable time study data. Other companies at the time were even harsher. During that time these tactics were effective at bringing about profit. Over the long haul however the

“Continuous improvement” systems are only effective at accelerating an organization towards it’s aim (or focus).   If the aim of an organization is to make money by ravaging and destroying the earth then a “continuous improvement” program will help an organization do just that. I hope that there aren’t management teams out there aiming to

Most large organizations today have a continuous improvement system in place, however not all continuous improvement programs are the same. Some management teams put innovation on the back-burner while others set up overbearing, bureaucratic improvement programs. A balanced and healthy “Continuous Improvement” program… 1. Is focused on long term benefits 2. Not forced (but instead,

Six Sigma uses the DMAIC cycle as a project roadmap. There are some advantages for using DMAIC… 1. Clear roles and responsibilities 2. Stated goal (at project level) 3. Easy to understand statistical tools 4. Common standardized language 5. Statistical approach This is great for complex processes in large organizations that have pre-existing mountains of

A few years ago I picked up an interesting book from the Strand’s $1 stand. It was published in 1983 titled “The Next Economy” by Paul Hawken.  Since we are now almost three decades beyond the publish date I thought to myself…  “Lets see how far off Paul Hawken was in his predictions”. What I