[Breaking] Peugeot cuts 8K jobs in France – Not As Lean as They Claimed.

Peugeot announced this morning that they will be cutting 8 000 jobs in France, primarily in the closing of a factory in Aulnay, just outside of Paris. The story is being covered widely and being tied together with President Hollande’s “difficulties” as president. The company’s CEO, Philippe Varin commented on the “seriousness” of the cutbacks, stating that the company is looking to seriously reconsider its organisation “in the interests of its workers.”
I don’t have much to add to this story – The Guardian is covering it pretty well. I thought it interesting that, just last year, Peugeot’s Stephanie Gasiglia spoke at Web2Connect about the Lean Manufacturing methodology that the company had in place. The methodology, which clearly isn’t working as well as the company would’ve liked, was developed by Japanese car maker Toyota in the past 10 years, and has spawned the Lean Startup craze in startups.
In more uplifting news, Web2Connect opened up tickets today for their 2012 conference. They haven’t yet announced their speaker line-up yet, but I’ll be excited to see which impending implosions will be speaking at the conference this year.