Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

Home. You are here: Books / Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

Editorial Review

An insightful look at the hottest new business trend from the authour of The Machine that Changed the World.

In their landmark book The Machine That Changed the World, James Womack and Daniel Jones, two of the top industrial analysts is 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. What's needed is "lean thinking" -- a groundbreaking new mindset that is revolutionizing the way of the modern business world.

Using case studies of "lean" companies around the world who have energetically embraced leanness in pursuit of their own perfect enterprises, Womack and Jones explain this exciting new concept in fascinating detail.

Clearly demonstrating the simple ideas behind lean thinking that can breathe new life into any company in any industry. Lean Thinking offers a new way of thinking, being, and doing for the serious manager -- one that will change the world.

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

Features:

• Abridged
• Audiobook

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
• tough, boring read
  This was a tough book for me to read and, in fact, I'm still trying to get through it. As others have said the material is covered with generalities and lacks specifics. Perhaps its purpose is to explain the lean mindset which is fine but it is still a tough read.
• Lean Thinking
  Excellent reading for an explanation of Lean from its history through a vision of what is to become with several well known companies as examples in implementation.
  I hear the myth about Lean vs. union shops a lot, this book should dispel the rumor that Lean = job loss.
  
• Lean principles & theory... this is not a guide or handbook
  This 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 guide. If you... more info
• 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 and Jones address how... more info

Similar Products:

• The Toyota Way, Price:
  $18.45
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Price:
  $16.47
• Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA
• Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together, Price:
  $21.01
• The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed, Price:
  $11.53