The Innovative Lean Machine

In order for an organization to thrive in a competitive business environment, its strategy, people, and branding must be fully optimized. The Innovative Lean Machine: Synchronizing People, Branding, and Strategy to Win in the Marketplace explains how to use Lean principles and visual tools to maximize these core components in any business.The book

From near-extinction in the early eighties, Harley-Davidson rose to worldwide recognition and is still today one of the great, iconic American motorcycle brands. In this insider guide, former Harley-Davidson executive Dantar Oosterwal offers an exclusive look at how Harley-Davidson was able to adapt in an ever-changing world to stay on top and stay in existence. In The Lean Machine, readers learn about Harley-Davidson’s secret weapon and go-to formula for outstanding success: Knowledge-Based Product Development. Rooted in Japanese productivity improvement techniques, this method helped Harley realize an unprecedented fourfold increase in throughput in half the time--powering annual growth of more than ten percent. Winner of the 2017 Shingo Prize for Literature, The Lean Machine--which is part business journal, part analysis, and part step-by-step toolkit--takes readers through the day-to-day transformation at Harley and identifies universal change and improvement issues so that companies in any industry can incorporate this game-changing system--with predictably excellent results.

In order for an organization to thrive in a competitive business environment, its strategy, people, and branding must be fully optimized. The Innovative Lean Machine: Synchronizing People, Branding, and Strategy to Win in the Marketplace explains how to use Lean principles and visual tools to maximize these core components in any business. The book demystifies theory with examples of the various visual tools any organization can rely on during the idea generation, product development, and branding processes. Filled with easy-to-follow graphics, charts, and tables, the text provides a simple, yet effective, series of visual frameworks that readers can immediately apply with little or no difficulty. Describing how to ensure your business planning reflects what is most valuable to your customers, this resource presents the insights of a creative thought process that drives innovative solutions. It considers the key aspects of Lean that can help you drive innovation in the development of your organization’s branding, strategy, and in the selection and management of its people. It also includes discussions on the characteristics of highly effective and trustworthy people. After reading this book, you will better understand how to use Lean tools to build a stronger brand, build better market strategies, and identify and retain effective people. You will also gain an understanding of what it takes to align all organizational activities to ensure maximum value for your customers while relentlessly driving out waste.

Lean manufacturing cannot happen in a factory that lacks dependable, effective equipment. Breakdowns and processing defects translate into excess work-in-process and finished inventory, kept on hand ""just in case."" Recurring minor stoppages force employees to watch automated equipment that should run by itself. TPM gives a framework for addressing such problems, but many companies implement TPM at a superficial level, and the resulting productivity gains fall short of their potential. If your TPM implementation has resulted in posters and logos rather than a rise of productivity, how are you addressing this halt of progress? In TPM for the Lean Factory, authors Sekine and Arai teach you to identify and attack the key equipment-related problems and misunderstandings that make plants miss their lean manufacturing goals. Written for companies with a basic TPM framework already in place, you'll learn three powerful approaches for cutting this waste: The new 5Ss: focusing on standard locations and labeling through the first 2Ss Instant maintenance: mastering quick repairs of minor equipment failures Improved setup operations: organizing the preparation to save time and prevent errors Chapters on cell design, product and process quality factor testing, and daily equipment inspection give you additional weapons for fighting waste and low productivity. For practical application, an implementation overview summarizes the steps for each topic, keyed to a set of 50 adaptable worksheets and examples. A practical and supportive resource, TPM for the Lean Factory extends a fresh vision and focus to help you get top results from your TPM efforts.

Lean Process Creation teaches the specific frames—the 6CON model—to look through to properly design any new process while optimizing the value-creating resources. The framing is applicable to create any process that involves people, technology, or equipment—whether the application is in manufacturing, healthcare, services, retail, or other industries. If you have a process, this approach will help. The result is 30% to 50% improvement in first-time quality, customer lead time, capital efficiency, labor productivity, and floorspace that could add up to millions of dollars saved per year. More important, it will increase both employee and customer satisfaction. The book details a case study from a manufacturing standpoint, starting with a tangible example to reinforce the 6CON model. This is the first book written from this viewpoint—connecting a realistic transformation with the detailed technical challenges, as well as the engagement of the stakeholders, each with their own bias. Key points and must-do actions are sprinkled throughout the case study to reinforce learning from the specific to the general. In this study, an empowered working team is charged with developing a new production line for a critical new product. As the story unfolds, they create an improved process that saves $5.6 million (10x payback on upfront resource investment) over the short life cycle of the product, as well as other measurable benefits in quality, ergonomics, and delivery. To an even greater benefit, they establish a new way of working that can be applied to all future process creation activities. Some organizations have tried their version of Lean process design following a formula or cookie-cutter approach. But true Lean process design goes well beyond forcing concepts and slogans into every situation. It is purposeful, scientific, and adaptable because every situation starts with a unique current state. In addition, Lean process design must include both the technical and social aspects, as they are essential to sustaining and improving any system. Observing the recurring problem of reworking processes that were newly launched brought the authors to the conclusion that a practical book focused on introducing the critical frames of Lean process creation was needed. This book enables readers to consider the details within each frame that must be addressed to create a Lean process. No slogans, no absolutes. Real thinking is required. This type of thinking is best learned from an example, so the authors provide this case study to demonstrate the thinking that should be applied to any process. High volume or low, simple or complex mix, manufacturing or service/transactional—the framing and thinking works. Along with the thinking, readers are enabled to derive their own future states. This is demonstrated in the story that surrounds the case study.

Draws conclusions for the future of the industry in the USA.

Explaining how to use Lean principles to drive innovation and strategic portfolio planning, The Innovative Lean Enterprise: Using the Principles of Lean to Create and Deliver Innovation to Customers outlines simple, yet powerful, visual Lean tools that can enhance idea generation and product development. It starts with a discussion of Lean principles and then identifies the applicable portions of Lean that can drive customer value. The book discusses customer value in the form of the benefits your customers desire. It walks you through the processes of using Lean techniques to effectively evaluate the quality of any prospective marketing opportunity and includes examples from a variety of industries, including healthcare. The text discusses value creation, reduction of waste, entrepreneurial system designer, set-based concurrent engineering, and Lean project management. It also includes numerous examples of visual management tools as they apply to innovation to help you develop the understanding required to achieve a competitive advantage for your brand, division, or company through Lean.

Lean Machines is a compilation of interviews with executives from 15 companies and organizations that have successfully introduced lean production techniques. They include: Alcoa, Danaher, Wiremold, Lockheed Martin, Freudenberg-NOK, Toyota, Delphi Automotive, Barry Controls, Boeing, HON Industries, Exide Technologies and the Warner Robins AFB.