Steve Jurvetson Quotes

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries. Lean thinking defines value as 'providing benefit to the customer'; anything else is waste.

Even a small reduction in errors and rework can have a significant impact.

We're reviewing everything to see how we can do it better, faster, and more efficiently.

I remember very clearly at the first budget review having a pretty direct conversation with the head of manufacturing... We began to get huge improvements in productivity and responsiveness. I got a chance to see that firsthand.

Industry looks at research and development for energy efficiency, lowering material costs, so on and so forth.

The investment we're all looking for is actually saving labor... Look at what the internet is doing to retail.

The more you eliminate the inefficient use of information, the better it is for productivity.

If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.

I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature. For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration.

That transcends everything - skipping the transfer of dailies is a game-changer.

I think any time you increase focus, increase speed, all those are going to help any business.

I'm always trying to think of ways to make something more efficient. If I have to do something once, that's fine. If I have to do it twice, I'm kind of annoyed. And if I have to do it three times, I'm going to try to automate it.

To be a good manager, a manager tries to constantly fight to reduce waste.

I believe there are a lot of inefficiencies in the way technical innovation happens.

Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.

CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex.

Process innovation is different from product innovation. It's about how do you create a new product or develop a new product or manufacture a new product, but not a new product itself?

Customers require the effective integration of technologies to simplify their workflow and boost efficiency.

Efficiency innovations are a natural part of the economic cycle, but these are the innovations that streamline process and actually reduce the number of available jobs.

But now they have it down to a real science where it's about an hour.

New standards for safety are now in place and Canada has helped provide tools and techniques that were needed. Technologies like these are innovative and represent great achievements for us.

We dried continuously day and night. We had no efficient way to do it, so we built this new popcorn plant.

I will be ruthless in cutting out waste, streamlining structures and improving efficiency.

I'm grasping with how you do something on a large scale with multiple operations and not have quality decrease.