Beyond The Lean Revolution

Most organizations’ change efforts focus solely on eliminating waste in specific departments. While this “lean paradigm” is a good place to start, true enterprise transformation goes much further. Based on years of research and implementation, Beyond the Lean Revolution provides a road map for achieving the kind of future-oriented results that enhance value to stakeholders. Authors Deborah Nightingale and Jayakanth help readers achieve this by asking them to address the big-picture questions like, What are the strategic objectives? How is the enterprise performing against those objectives? How should it be? Who are the stakeholders and what do they value? You’ll then learn to strategically position your responses to move toward an audacious vision for the future--one where every cog in the complex enterprise system of people, processes, and is successful. Illuminating examples will teach you how to ensure senior leadership remains committed, how to assess your enterprise’s current state, and how to analyze stakeholder values so you can plan for future growth. From inception to implementation and beyond, this book provides a holistic framework for bridging the gap from mere change--to genuine transformation.

While more and more companies are aggressively pursuing Operational Excellence by employing Six Sigma, Lean, and other continuous improvement methods, the concept has yet to be defined in a way that can be easily taught and applied, especially in industries other than manufacturing. This book fills that need. Beyond the Lean Office uses a compelling novel format to illustrate what it takes to create and sustain flow and Operational Excellence in the office. Readers learn as they follow the main character through initial attempts to correct late responses to a primary customer and the evolution to an approach based on Operational Excellence. The story illustrates the day-to-day issues that most organizations face in their pursuit of Operational Excellence. To achieve Operational Excellence, it takes more than just a strong leader with passion and drive. The key ingredient is practical knowledge that can be applied quickly and easily by following a process. This book supplies step-by-step guidance on how to move your office services from point A to point B. The practical insights and guidance presented here create a road map that can be shared with each employee to rapidly move your organization forward. All chapters also include a From the Author section that shares authoritative insights on the topic at hand. After reading this book, you will understand how to design and create self-healing flow that provides reliable, predictable output in the office and operates without the need for management intervention to deliver the services provided by the office. Instead, management focuses on the activities that grow your enterprise.

It is estimated that U.S. manufacturers are currently operating at only 65 percent effectiveness in implementing Lean production. Covering the fundamentals needed to be competitive in today’s marketplace, Beyond Lean Production: Emphasizing Speed and Innovation to Beat the Competition provides readers with the tools to help their organizations achieve 100 percent effectiveness in Lean production. Explaining that overseas factories can't compete with U.S. factories in speed of delivery to domestic customers, the book provides the understanding required to add speed and urgency in all that you do in the office and the factory. It explains how to eliminate waste so you can meet and even exceed your customers’ expectations regarding service, quality, and cost. The book is organized into two phases. The first phase, Holding Actions, covers the fundamentals needed to hold your position against the competition until you can implement the methods described in phase II of the book. It presents 12 little-known tools and strategic weapons that you can immediately put to use to improve on your current competitive position. Phase II, The Business Command Center, presents unique and powerful concepts that can be used with the fundamentals covered in phase I. Explaining how to use speed as a competitive weapon, the book will help you to remove the obstacles that interfere with continuous flow manufacturing. It presents the concept of circulatory management that can put a stop to the ever-increasing layers of management with decreasing ownership. By implementing the holding action and the business command center described in this book, you can significantly improve your odds of beating the competition at home and overseas.

This book by Peter Béndek presents a strong case against the current practice of business operations improvement, based on numerous studies from the business world as well as insights from the most prestigious authors of the last fifty years. The author contests the applicability and indeed the relevance of the Toyota Production System and its spin-offs to the Western context, claiming that a revised approach is much better suited to taking our specific cultural conditions into account, while also combining increased transparency, speed, and sustainability of change with a robust value-creating capability. Dr. Béndek argues that this approach can have a far-reaching impact on corporate cultures by offering an all-encompassing learning system, one that provides a more coherent and actionable continuous improvement strategy than conventional approaches. The book offers an important guide to rethinking operations management, both in academia and business practice.

Author Chris Cooper compiles the lessons he learned over a twenty year journey in Lean. From military to charity and from for-profit or non-profit, Chris discovered that the basics of Lean principles apply in every workplace while transforming those involved by what can be achieved. The aims of this book are simple. Chris distills his knowledge to its simple basic essence so that current and future generations of leaders can learn and apply it. Through stories and discussion questions, Chris sets the reader on a path of action that shows a way of looking at the world of human work. And, once the reader can "see" through the Lean lens, it is truly a beautiful sight because of the infinite potential. The Little Book of Lean should be an inspiration for readers to begin to forever improve!

Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

In discussing a management topic, scholars, educators, practitioners, and the media often toss out the name of a theorist (Taylor, Simon, Weber) or make a sideways reference to a particular theory (bureaucracy, total quality management, groupthink) and move on, as if assuming their audience possesses the necessary background to appreciate and integrate the reference. This is often far from the case. Individuals are frequently forced to seek out a hodgepodge of sources varying in quality and presentation to provide an overview of a particular idea. This work is designed to serve as a core reference for anyone interested in the essentials of contemporary management theory. Drawing together a team of international scholars, it examines the global landscape of the key theories and the theorists behind them, presenting them in the context needed to understand their strengths and weaknesses to thoughtfully apply them. In addition to interpretations of long-established theories, it also offers essays on cutting-edge research as one might find in a handbook. And, like an unabridged dictionary, it provides concise, to-the-point definitions of key concepts, ideas, schools, and figures. Features and Benefits: Two volumes containing over 280 signed entries provide users with the most authoritative and thorough reference resources available on management theory, both in terms of breadth and depth of coverage. Standardized presentation format, organized into categories based on validity and importance, structures entries so that readers can assess the fundamentals, evolution, and impact of theories. To ease navigation between and among related entries, a Reader’s Guide groups entries thematically and each entry is followed by Cross-References. In the electronic version, the Reader’s Guide combines with the Cross-References and a detailed Index to provide robust search-and-browse capabilities. An appendix with a Chronology of Management Theory allows readers to easily chart directions and trends in thought and theory from early times to the present. An appendix with Central Management Insights allows readers to easily understand, compare, and apply major theoretical messages of the field. Suggestions for Further Reading at the end of each entry guide readers to sources for more detailed research and discussion. Key themes include: Nature of Management Managing People, Personality, and Perception Managing Motivation Managing Interactions Managing Groups Managing Organizations Managing Environments Strategic Management Human Resources Management International Management and Diversity Managerial Decision Making, Ethics, and Creativity Management Education, Research, and Consulting Management of Operations, Quality, and Information Systems Management of Entrepreneurship Management of Learning and Change Management of Technology and Innovation Management and Leadership Management and Social / Environmental Issues PLUS: Appendix of Chronology of Management Theory PLUS: Appendix of Central Management Insights

Weaving together prescriptions with a series of cases, Systemic Change Management describes the value and how-to of a systemic or enterprise approach to organizational change. Each capability presented here promotes change, but when used together create synergies that magnify their individual impact within and between collaborating organizations.