Improving Business Performance With Lean, Second Edition


Book Description

This book is a concise introduction to the essential concepts and tools used in the Lean method for improving business processes. It constitutes a sufficient toolkit to enable practitioners to quickly start using Lean to improve business processes in their workplace. Alternatively, it can also serve as a textbook in undergraduate or master’s programs. This book succinctly describes the benefits of Lean in manufacturing, sales, administration, distribution, health care, and other industries, as well as providing a step-by-step description of how Lean is applied.




Statistical Thinking


Book Description

How statistical thinking and methodology can help you make crucial business decisions Straightforward and insightful, Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, Second Edition, prepares you for business leadership by developing your capacity to apply statistical thinking to improve business processes. Unique and compelling, this book shows you how to derive actionable conclusions from data analysis, solve real problems, and improve real processes. Here, you'll discover how to implement statistical thinking and methodology in your work to improve business performance. Explores why statistical thinking is necessary and helpful Provides case studies that illustrate how to integrate several statistical tools into the decision-making process Facilitates and encourages an experiential learning environment to enable you to apply material to actual problems With an in-depth discussion of JMP® software, the new edition of this important book focuses on skills to improve business processes, including collecting data appropriate for a specified purpose, recognizing limitations in existing data, and understanding the limitations of statistical analyses.




Lean Higher Education


Book Description

In an environment of diminishing resources, growing enrollment, and increasing expectations of accountability, Lean Higher Education: Increasing the Value and Performance of University Processes provides the understanding and the tools required to return education to the consumers it was designed to serve the students. It supplies a unifying framew




Lean Hospitals


Book Description

Organizations around the world are using Lean to redesign care and improve processes in a way that achieves and sustains meaningful results for patients, staff, physicians, and health systems. Lean Hospitals, Third Edition explains how to use the Lean methodology and mindsets to improve safety, quality, access, and morale while reducing costs, increasing capacity, and strengthening the long-term bottom line. This updated edition of a Shingo Research Award recipient begins with an overview of Lean methods. It explains how Lean practices can help reduce various frustrations for caregivers, prevent delays and harm for patients, and improve the long-term health of your organization. The second edition of this book presented new material on identifying waste, A3 problem solving, engaging employees in continuous improvement, and strategy deployment. This third edition adds new sections on structured Lean problem solving methods (including Toyota Kata), Lean Design, and other topics. Additional examples, case studies, and explanations are also included throughout the book. Mark Graban is also the co-author, with Joe Swartz, of the book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Frontline Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, which is also a Shingo Research Award recipient. Mark and Joe also wrote The Executive’s Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.




RFID for the Supply Chain and Operations Professional, Second Edition


Book Description

RFID (radio-frequency identification) is increasing its presence in our personal and business lives—you name it and RFID is likely to be finding its way there. RFID has many advantages over other auto-ID technologies, including its ability to read tags at the item level while the items are still in boxes and pallets and out of line of sight. In addition, RFID tags are reusable, which helps reduce the costs associated with an RFID system. RFID is a technology that can provide decision makers with real-time information to result in better and timelier decisions. It can help increase efficiency, security, and asset control. This second edition contains updated information on the technology and its uses, new and updated examples, and a new case study. This book provides readers with no prior knowledge of RFID with the basics of the technology, guidelines for considering its use, examples of how RFID is being used effectively in a variety of organizations, and guidelines for implementing an RFID system.




Leading and Managing Lean


Book Description

Lean is a comprehensive, integral system consisting of four interdependent elements: leadership, culture, team, and practices and tools. This book examines these elements following a systematic, hierarchical orientation and explains their relevance for guiding lean initiatives. It begins with the identification and establishment of strategic goals, followed with strategy development, and lastly tactical choices. This model framework is cognizant of a firm's relative internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. Each of the four integral lean system elements is explored in depth. The model framework offers a path to develop lean leaders with practical, actionable ideas suited for applications in all industries. Throughout the book, the evolution of the current body of lean knowledge is examined as well as lean's complementary initiative, total quality management. A perspective which views lean as a customer-driven philosophy for organization-wide continuous improvement and waste elimination is maintained throughout the book. This second edition builds upon the first edition with additional lean content focused on technology, supply chain management, flexibility and agility constructs, and accounting.




An Introduction to Lean Work Design


Book Description

This book provides a short, concise overview of lean work design, which sees lean systems as the result of a systematic implementation of appropriate work processes. It discusses lean tools, but views tools only as a means of achieving a desirable work design and does not see the use of lean tools as a goal in themselves.




Managing and Improving Quality


Book Description

Quality is a discipline that focuses on product and service excellence. This book is about improving the quality of products and services. The improved quality and reliability lead to higher perceived value and increased market share for a company, thereby increasing revenue and profitability. The book discusses the concepts and dimensions of quality, costs of poor quality, the importance of quality in this highly competitive global economy, and quality programs-Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma that focus on improving quality in industries. The text integrates quality concepts, statistical methods, and one of the major tools of quality-Statistical Process Control (SPC)-a major part of Six Sigma control phase. A significant part of the book is devoted to process control and the tools of SPC-control charts-used for monitoring, controlling, and improving the processes by identifying the causes of process variation. The fundamentals of control charts, along with SPC techniques for variables and attributes, and process capability analysis and their computer applications are discussed in detail. This book fills a gap in this area by showing the readers comprehensive and step-wise solutions to model and solve quality problems using computers.




The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence


Book Description

Explaining how to implement and sustain a top-down strategy for manufacturing excellence, The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence: A Leader’s Guide to Achieving and Sustaining Excellence provides a comprehensive, proven approach for delivering world-class performance while also cultivating the right culture through leadership and mentoring. Tapping into four decades of leadership experience, 35 years of it in the manufacturing industry, Larry Fast explains how to achieve vertical and horizontal alignment across your organization. He details a clear pathway to excellence via the 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence and provides a method for tracking progress—plant by plant and function by function. Emphasizing the importance of using Lean and Six Sigma tools to improve your business, the book: Integrates strategy and leadership development Paves a path for culture change–Operator-Led Process Control (OLPC)—that prepares hourly employees to take control of their processes and prepares management to enable them to do it Details an audit process for tracking progress and ensuring sustainability Includes a CD with color versions of the images in the book as well as a sample Manufacturing Excellence Audit, a sample Communications Plan, and a sample Training Plan that can all be easily customized for the reader’s use This resource-rich book will allow you to spell out leadership expectations and provide your employees and associates with a clear understanding of their individual roles. Helping you keep everyone in your organization focused during the quest towards sustainable manufacturing excellence, the accompanying CD supplies the tools you and your team will need to pursue it with passion, confidence, and urgency. Listen to what Larry Fast has to say about his new book, The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence. Part One — Part Two




Improving Production with Lean Thinking


Book Description

Unique coverage of manufacturing management techniques--complete with cases and real-world examples. Improving Production with Lean Thinking picks up where other references on production processes leave off. It is increasingly important to integrate and systematize lean thinking throughout production/manufacturing and the supply chain because the market is becoming more competitive, products are becoming more complex, and product life is getting shorter and shorter. With a practical focus, this book encompasses the science and analytical background for improving manufacturing, control, and design. It covers specific methodologies and tools for: * Material flow and facilities layout, including a six step layout design process * The design of cellular layouts * Analyzing and improving equipment efficiency, including Poka-Yoke, motion study, maintenance, SMED, and more * Environmental improvements, including 5S implementation With real-life case studies of successful European and American approaches to lean manufacturing, this reference is ideal for engineers, managers, and researchers in manufacturing and production facilities as well as students. It bridges the gap between production/manufacturing and supply chain techniques and provides a detailed roadmap to improved factory performance.




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