Lean Management

Interest in the phenomenon known as "lean" has grown significantly in recent years. This is the first volume to provide an academically rigorous overview of the field of lean management, introducing the reader to the application of lean in diverse application areas, from the production floor to sales and marketing, from the automobile industry to academic institutions. The volume collects contributions from well-known lean experts and up-and-coming scholars from around the world. The chapters provide a detailed description of lean management across the manufacturing enterprise (supply chain, accounting, production, sales, IT etc.), and offer important perspectives for applying lean across different industries (construction, healthcare, logistics). The contributors address challenges and opportunities for future development in each of the lean application areas, concluding most chapters with a short case study to illustrate current best practice. The book is divided into three parts: The Lean Enterprise Lean across Industries A Lean World. This handbook is an excellent resource for business and management students as well as any academics, scholars, practitioners, and consultants interested in the "lean world."

The book provides a holistic and practical approach to lean management throughout the business value chain. The lean management framework and tools demonstrate the optimal design and use of methods, tools and principles for companies and organisations. The author describes comprehensively how lean management enables companies to concentrate on value-adding activities and processes to achieve a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage. A wealth of best practices, industry examples and case studies are used to reveal the diversity and opportunities of lean management methodologies, methods and principles. Moreover, the book shows how lean management principles are ultimately applied in industries like automotive, healthcare, education and services industries.

Make your farm better, smarter, and more productive The Lean method is revolutionising farming globally with its proven approach for reducing waste, improving productivity and sustaining profits.In The Lean Dairy Farm, dairy farmer and Lean consultant Jana Hocken explains why this approach is essential to every dairy farm and how to apply these tools, practices and principles to your dairy operation. The Lean Dairy Farm helps reduce the common problems and stressors faced by farmers every day: long work hours, high staff turnovers, repeat problems, breakdowns, wastage, safety and high costs. Using her own family’s dairy farm as a case study, Jana provides insight into how the Lean approach applies to farming, introduces practical tools to help you improve efficiency and reduce waste, and shows you how to create a farm culture that supports Lean thinking. Even if Lean is entirely new to you, this book offers a simple blueprint for applying its principles and practices to improve your farm. Quickly make use of basic Lean concepts on your farm Identify and eliminate waste in farm processes Organise your farm effectively to improve productivity Standardise your processes to do everything right the first time Develop an engaged, high performing team If you want a more efficient, profitable and robust dairy farm, The Lean Dairy Farm is for you.

Exploring Lean manufacturing in a holistic manner, this book helps organizations to implement Lean principles successfully by offering theoretical, empirical and practical knowledge. It empirically demonstrates how a successful Lean initiative can improve organizational efficiency, and incorporates valuable primary research to substantiate findings. It argues that Lean principles need to be applied throughout the value chain in order to be successful , and suggests that these tools need to be aligned with culture and change management. Chapters examine issues including Lean cultures, impediments to Lean, Lean and performance measurement, and the impact of Lean. Viewing Lean as a never-ending journey, this book provides a valuable resource to practising Lean managers, and specialist researchers and students, and also offers an important reference for organizations embarking on their Lean voyage.

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.

Does your company think and act ahead of technological change, ahead of the customer, and ahead of the competition? Thinking strategically requires a company to face these questions with a clear future image of itself. Implementing a Lean Management System lays out a comprehensive management system for aligning the firm's vision of the future with market realities. Based on hoshin management, the Japanese strategic planning method used by top managers for driving TQM throughout an organization, Lean Management is about deploying vision, strategy, and policy at all levels of daily activity. It is an eminently practical methodology emerging out of the implementation of continuous improvement methods and employee involvement. The key tools in the text build on the knowledge of the worker, multi-tasking, and an understanding of the role and responsibilities of the new lean manufacturer.

You likely don’t need any more tools, programs, or workshops to improve your hospital. What you need is a simple and consistent approach to manage problem-solving. Filling this need, this book presents a Lean management system that can help break down barriers between staff, directors, and administration and empower front-line staff to resolve their own problems. Lean Daily Management for Healthcare: A Strategic Guide to Implementing Lean for Hospital Leaders provides practical, step-by-step guidance on how to roll out Lean daily management in a hospital setting. Ideal for leaders that may feel lost in the transition process, the book supplies a roadmap to help you identify where your hospital currently is in its Lean process, where it’s headed, and how your role will change as you evolve into a Lean leader. Illustrating the entire process of implementing Lean daily management, the book breaks down the cultural progression of units into discreet, objectively measurable phases. It identifies what leaders at all levels of the organization must do to progress units into the next phase of development. Complete with case studies from different service areas in the hospital, the book explains how to link problem-solving boards together to achieve meaningful and measurable improvements in: the emergency department, the operating room, discharge times, clinics, quality, and patient satisfaction. After reading this book you will understand how consistent rounding, a few whiteboards, pen-and-paper data, and a focused effort on working the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle can help you build a common problem-solving bench strength throughout your organization—establishing the framework upon which future improvement can be built.

Whether it's because of a lack of understanding, poor planning, or a myriad of other things, 50 to 60 percent of the IT effort in most companies can be considered waste. Explaining how to introduce Lean principles to your IT functions to reduce and even eliminate this waste, Lean Management Principles for Information Technology provides t