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Title: Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, James Womack, Daniel Jones ISBN: 0-7432-4927-5 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (25 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Great Ideas, But Now How?
Comment: Lean Thinking does an excellent job of detailing what is wrong with the standard business processes in North America and pretty much the rest of the world. The authors also do a very good job of introducing (I hadn't yet read The Machine that Changed the World) and explaining their ideas to make clear that there is a much better way available to companies.
I have long been a big believer that all employees are valuable resources that are all to often wasted due to 'right sizing' efforts to achieve immediate monetary targets. Lean Thinking has total employee involvement as a basic pillar of the theory.
The business examples they provide are bulletproof, and definitely make the case that what they suggest can be done.
The problems I had with the book had to do with credibly backing up many of the claims the authors make, like " quality always zooms when flow and pull thinking are put in place together." Is there any hard evidence to back up this assertion? No in the book. The authors make many guarantees about eye-popping improvements their theory will bring if it is implemented correctly.
Implementation is where I have the biggest problem with this book. Womack and Jones certainly do a good job of explaining their theory and backing it up with impeccable examples, but it all adds up to another book in which the authors tell you what you HAVE to do, but not how to do it. It is my opinion that made yet another contribution to the Knowing-Doing Gap (Pfeffer and Sutton, HBS Press 2000). The great ideas contained in the book lack any real, concrete action steps for successful implementation and so will rarely be successfully implemented.
It is similar to all of the talk about innovation. Everyone knows that it is important to do it, but few actually do it because they don't know how. It's not as simple as snapping your fingers. How do you actually go about involving all of your employees? I myself would involve the Simplex process (1995, The Power of Innovation, M.S. Basadur), but that's just me. The same logic applies to almost every section of the last third of the book. I kept saying to myself, "Wow, that's easier said than done."
The book leaves it to the reader to essentially make it up for themselves to make lean thinking a reality in their organization.
I realize that it would be impossible to provide a step-by-step action plan that woud fit any company or situation, but the authors could have done more than offer "Find a change agent." Gee, thanks for the tip! By the end of the book I realized why the implementation side of the book was so thin - the book is a marketing tool for the authors and their associates. Near the end of the book the reader is told to get a sensei, and hey, there happen to be alot of them in Japan you can hire! Also, we, the authors, do speaking engagements if you want to hire us!
The book is definitely a worthwhile read, as it does open the eyes to the reader of a better way of operating, how far away we currently are from it, and how we are all affected by it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Playing with Fire
Comment: The principals in this book are sound. However, top management must make the full commitment and follow the principals as defined. Trying to shortcut the process will have detrimental results if not disastrous. The concepts in this book my sound very radical but in actuality are common sense. And that is the pitfall. I have seen where a company makes a commitment toward lean manufacturing. But somewhere along the line management thinks they can modify the principals or they begin to not see immediate results and they don't follow the plan to fruition. They end up losing money or their shirt! The hard way is always the easiest way. If you own your own company or are trying to sell this concept to management in your present work environment, it is important that everyone in the organization makes a commitment to Lean thinking. Do not cut corners and stay the course. Don't play with fire.
Rating: 1
Summary: Great, if you like stories about business.
Comment: I'm not sure who the audience is for Lean Thinking. Call me naïve, but I assumed it was written by Womack and Jones to help organizations analyze their business processes and eliminate muda (Japanese for "waste"), thereby improving overall performance. However, after reading almost 250 pages of anecdotal success stories, the chapter entitled "Action Plan," where one would assume resides the punch-line of the text, I was met by the profound advice to "Get the knowledge" by hiring one of the numerous experts in North America, Europe or Japan, and read some of the "vast literature" available on lean techniques. Reminds me of the Steve Martin joke where he tells you how to be a millionaire. "First, get a million dollars."
After reading Lean Thinking, I'm struck by the irony that while the authors recommend removing waste from the manner by which your products are delivered to the end customer, they don't take their own advice. The text could have been distilled from 384 pages down to five or six, since there's no real substantive instruction on how to implement lean principles. Then again, maybe I completely misinterpreted the intent of the authors as to their audience and it really was written for the business historian who enjoys reading about how Pratt & Whitney started in 1855. That must be it, because after I ponder the title, I realize that Lean Thinking is for just that, thinking. What I really wanted was a book entitled Lean Doing.
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Title: The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos ISBN: 0060974176 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Learning to See Version 1.3 by Mike Rother, John Shook, Jim Womack, Dan Jones ISBN: 0966784308 Publisher: Lean Enterprises Inst Inc Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Lean Transformation: How to Change Your Business into a Lean Enterprise by Bruce A. Henderson, Jorge L. Larco, Stephen H. Martin ISBN: 0964660121 Publisher: The Oaklea Press Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $26.86 |
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Title: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox ISBN: 0884270610 Publisher: North River Press Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: May, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Lean Six Sigma : Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed by Michael L. George ISBN: 0071385215 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 25 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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