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Books : Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your CorporationIn association with Amazon.com List Price: $26.00 Price: $22.76 You Save: $3.24 (12%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Format: Bargain Price Label: Simon & Schuster Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: September 09, 1996 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Studio: Simon & Schuster Sales Rank: 109946 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Book Description: In their landmark book The Machine That Changed the World, James Womack and Daniel Jones, two of the top industrial analysts in the world, explained how companies can dramatically improve their performance through the "lean production" approach pioneered by Toyota. Lean Thinking extends these ideas to provide a rallying cry for today's corporate leaders. After a decade of downsizing and reengineering, most companies in North America, Europe, and Japan are still stuck, searching for a formula for sustainable growth and success. The problem, as Womack and Jones explain in Lean Thinking, is that managers have lost sight of value for the customer and how to create it. By focusing on their existing organizations and outdated definitions of value, managers create waste, and the economies of the advanced countries continue to stagnate. What's needed instead is lean thinking to help managers clearly specify value, to line up all the value-creating activities for a specific product along a value stream, and to make value flow smoothly at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection. The first part of the book describes each of these concepts and makes them come alive with striking examples. As Lean Thinking clearly demonstrates, these simple ideas can breathe new life into any company in any industry, routinely doubling both productivity and sales while stabilizing employment. But most managers will need guidance on how to make the lean leap in their firm. Part II provides a step-by-step action plan, based on in-depth studies of fifty lean companies in a wide range of industries across the world -- including Pratt & Whitney, Porsche, and Toyota. Even those readers who believe they have embraced lean thinking will discover in Part III that another dramatic leap is possible by creating a lean enterprise for each of their product families that tightly links all value-creating activities from concept to product launch, from order to delivery, and from raw materials into the arms of the consumer. This new concept takes the best features from the American, German, and Japanese industrial traditions and recombines them in a way that can be applied to every economic activity, from long-distance travel to construction to health care. Lean Thinking does not provide a new management "program" for the one-minute manager. Instead, it offers a new way of thinking, being, and doing for the serious manager -- one that will change the world. Amazon.com: In the revised and updated edition of Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones provide a thoughtful expansion upon their value-based business system based on the Toyota model. Along the way they update their action plan in light of new research and the increasing globalization of manufacturing, and they revisit some of their key case studies (most of which still derive, however, from the automotive, aerospace, and other manufacturing industries). The core of the lean model remains the same in the new edition. All businesses must define the "value" that they produce as the product that best suits customer needs. The leaders must then identify and clarify the "value stream," the nexus of actions to bring the product through problems solving, information management, and physical transformation tasks. Next, "lean enterprise" lines up suppliers with this value stream. "Flow" traces the product across departments. "Pull" then activates the flow as the business re-orients towards the pull of the customer's needs. Finally, with the company reengineered towards its core value in a flow process, the business re-orients towards "perfection," rooting out all the remaining muda (Japanese for "waste") in the system. Despite the authors' claims to "actionable principles for creating lasting value in any business during any business conditions," the lean model is not demonstrated with broad applications in the service or retail industries. But those manager's whose needs resonate with those described in the Lean Thinking case studies will find a host of practical guidelines for streamlining their processes and achieving manufacturing efficiencies. --Patrick O'Kelley Average Rating:
 Rating: - Lean principles & theory... this is not a guide or handbookThis book is a very good introduction to "lean manufacturing". I would say it is aimed at managers or other interested people in implementing lean manufacturing in their organizations. It is a perfect book to gain adepts for the lean cause, so if you are finding resistance in your organization to implement it, you could give out some copies of this book. This book is more a general reading book (basics & benefits, resistance you might encounter, etc.) than a deep study or detailed ... Read More Rating: - Becoming Lean and Mean!The only way to be competitive in the world marketplace is to be much more efficient. In other words "lean and mean." Efficient at engineering, efficient at manufacturing and efficient at meeting/exceeding customer expectations are all keys to becoming more competitive. This book and their Machine that Changed the World are good resources for manufacturing facilities more lean. And...lean thinking leads to more lean thinking. Using the Toyota system as a guide, Womack ... Read More Rating:  - A classic, must readI was fortunate enough to participate in the Pratt & Whitney lean transformation described in Lean Thinking. While it is not a "how to" book, it does a good job of describing the lean initiatives undertaken. This book is a classic "lean must read." Rating: - Very readable look at "Lean Thinking"Lean is a specific management technique to make an organization more efficient (and a private sector company more profitable). This book is a well written introduction to the subject. The authors, James Womack and Daniel Jones, provide lots of examples to illustrate their basic points. Thus, this is a very useful introduction to the subject, for those of us who are not experts on this matter. To start at the beginning. . . . The enemy is "Muda," a Japanese word that means "waste," in ... Read More Rating: - Eye-opening!The book was truly eye-opening for me! Having spent more than enough time with management consultants and the "programs of the week," misguided Six Sigma projects, etc., I am very cautious about "new" programs. The simple, clear, transformational philosophy of the book was amazing to me. While the book does not outline the steps to take for making a Lean transformation, it should be required reading, before any venture into Lean management. Without an understanding of the philosophy behind Lean, ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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