Thinking Beyond Lean

Cusumano and Nobeoka the bestselling coauthors of MICROSOFT SECRETS, reveal how Toyota and other leading automobile makers achieve remarkable savings and growth by using shared technology and organisational capabilities across multiple projects. THINKING BEYOND LEAN explains how to manage product development more strategically and efficiently, focusing on a concept the authors call "multi-project management". In contrast, most books on product development deal with how to manage products one at a time. The basic idea of multi-product management is to create new products that share key components but to utilise separate development teams that ensure each product will differ enough to attract different customers. Taking up where THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD left off, THINKING BEYOND LEAN will change the way leaders do business now and in the future.

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.

Hospitals have long relied on the heroics of one brilliant nurse or doctor to save the day. Such heroics often result in temporary workarounds and quick fixes that leave not only patients and quality care at risk, but also increase costs. This is the story of an organization breaking that habit. Like a growing number of healthcare organizations around the world, ThedaCare, Inc. has been using lean thinking and the principles of the Toyota Production System to improve quality of care, reduce waste, and become more reliable. But lean thinking was incompatible with ThedaCare’s old top-down, hero-based system of management. Kim Barnas, former SVP of ThedaCare, shows us how she and her team created a management system that is stable and lean, to spur continuous improvement. Beyond Heroes shows the reader, step by step, how ThedaCare teams developed the system, using the stories of its doctors, nurses and administrators to illustrate. The book explores each of the eight essential components of the lean system, from front-line problem solving with the scientific method to daily team huddles and creating standard work for leaders all the way to the top of an organization. Finally, the author introduces four executives from healthcare systems across North America who have implemented ThedaCare’s system and share the lessons they learned along the way. Beyond Heroes is not just a call to action or an argument for a better healthcare system. It is a necessary roadmap through the rocky terrain ahead, one that healthcare leaders can customize to their special needs.

As consumers, we have a greater selection of higher quality goods & services to choose from, yet our experience of obtaining & using these items is more frustrating than ever. At the same time, companies find themselves with declining customer loyalty & greater challenges in fulfilling orders. This text offers solutions to these problems.

While there are many books written on the basics of the "supply" side of the supply chain (i.e. strategic sourcing, sourcing/procurement, and purchasing), there hasn’t been much written on those areas from a Lean perspective. Considering that supply chain costs, primarily procurement and transportation, can range from 50 to 70% of sales, it's surprising that this area has not been fully explored. As a result, some companies tend to place too much emphasis on the traditional focus of reducing material costs instead of process improvement. Lean Demand-Driven Procurement: How to Apply Lean Thinking to Your Supply Management Process details the basic supply management concepts and processes (i.e. sourcing, procurement, and purchasing) in an easy-to-understand format in combination with various process improvement tools, methodologies, best practices, examples, and cases written from a Lean perspective. It focuses and pinpoints ways to identify waste on the supply side through improved processes and, in some cases, technology. Applying Lean principles to procurement and purchasing processes identies non-traditional sources of waste, and in some cases, creates a paradigm shift that results in additional benets to the entire supply chain.

In this groundbreaking sequel to The Gold Mine, authors Michael and Freddy Ballé present a compelling story that teaches readers the most important lean lesson of all: how to transform themselves and their workers through the discipline of learning the lean system. The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation reveals how individuals can go beyond the short-term gains from tools, and realize a deeper, sustainable path of improvement. Full of human moments that capture the excitement and drama of lean implementation, as well as clear explanations of how tools and systems go hand-in-hand, this book will teach and inspire every person working to make lean a reality in their organization today. This book will help you learn both the how of doing lean, as well as the why behind the tools, enabling you to become lean. Lean is the most important business model for competitive success today. Yet companies still struggle to sustain enduring and deep-rooted business success from their lean implementation efforts. The most important problem for these companies is becoming lean: how can they advance beyond realizing isolated gains from deploying lean tools, to fundamentally changing how they operate, think, and learn? In other words, how can companies learn to go beyond lean turnaround to achieve lean transformation? The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation, by lean experts Michael and Freddy Ballé, addresses this critical problem. As we move from what Jim Womack, author, lean management authority, and LEI founder, calls “the era of lean tools to the era of lean management,” The Lean Manager gives companies a definitive guide for sustaining their ability to learn and improve operations and financial performance, while continually developing people. “The only way to become and stay lean is to produce lean managers,” says Womack. “Every isolated effort will recede—or fail—unless companies learn to use the lean process as a way of developing individual problem-solvers with the ownership, initiative, and know-how to solve problems, learn, and ultimately coach new individuals in this discipline. That’s why this book matters so much.” The Lean Manager, the sequel to the Ballé’s international bestselling business novel The Gold Mine, tells the compelling story of plant manager Andrew Ward as he goes through the challenging but rewarding journey to becoming a lean manager. Under the guidance of Phil Jenkinson (whose own lean journey was at the core of The Gold Mine), Ward learns to use a deep understanding of lean tools, as well as a technical know-how of his plant’s operations, to foster a lean attitude that sustains continuous improvement. Where The Gold Mine shows you how to introduce a complete lean system, The Lean Manager demonstrates how to sustain it. Ward moves beyond fluency with tools to changing his behavior as a manager and leader. He shifts from giving orders and answers to asking the right questions so people identify and address problems. He learns how to use tools to unleash the creativity and motivation of people, so they learn how to solve problems as well as coach and teach others to solve problems. Ward learns how to create lean managers. “I am excited and have hopes that this book will enlighten readers about what it really means to live a business transformation that puts customers first and does this through developing people,” said Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way and professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. “People who do the work have to improve the work. There are tools, but they are not tools for ‘improving the process.’ They are tools for making problems visible and for helping people think about how to solve those problems.”

In the search for ever greater profits & efficiency, downsizing and re-engineering are inadequate. The authors maintain that Lean Thinking can improve a company through a series of simple ideas and a new concept of the meaning of value.

Do less and get more! This revolutionary approach to education marries tried-and-true success principles from Lean Manufacturing to classroom practices. Students perform better and teachers work less. The book models the quality and efficiency of Lean Think in schools so education personnel learn how to optimize student learning within contract time. The driving question, "Does this add value?" emboldens educators to remove waste and sharpen processes across multiple areas in education that affect student learning. Developed by Julie Laub, a master teacher and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Think has been applied successfully at the state, district, and local levels, resulting in measurable student improvement and increased teacher job satisfaction.