The Elusive Lean Enterprise


Book Description

In today's fast-paced and volatile business environment, where customers are demanding increased flexibility and lower cost, companies must operate in a waste-free environment to maintain a competitive edge and grow margins. Lean Enterprise is the process that companies are now adopting to provide superior customer service and improve bottom line performance. Are you contemplating Lean Enterprise for your manufacturing or office facility? Are you already implementing Lean, but dissatisfied with the speed of change? Do your employees think that Lean is just the new flavor of the month? Are you being forced to go Lean by your customers, or your competitors? Are you anticipating going offshore to cut costs? Irrespective of your situation, this book is for you. The Elusive Lean Enterprise is designed to help guide you through the Lean transformation and avoid the pitfalls. Find out why many companies are failing to live up to the promise of Lean, and why there are alternatives to outsourcing or going offshore. In The Elusive Lean Enterprise, lean experts Keith Gilpatrick and Brian Furlong show you what to do, what you must not do, and how to make Lean the way business is done in the 21st century. Learn from the mistakes of others and avoid the trial and error implementation process that often kills the initiative. Find out why you must change, how to change, and how to institutionalize the process. Understand the costs of outsourcing or going offshore and compare these to the Lean alternative. For companies that invest the time and have an effective strategy, Lean Enterprise can produce outstanding results. For those companies that fail to commit to the process and truly change the culture, a Lean Enterprise will truly remain elusive.




Lean Enterprise Systems


Book Description

Learn how Lean IT can help companies deliver better customer service and value Lean Enterprise Systems effectively demonstrates how the techniques derived from Lean Manufacturing, combined with the thoughtful application of information technology, can help all enterprises improve business performance and add significant value for their customers. The author also demonstrates how the basic concepts of Lean Manufacturing can be applied to create agile and responsive Lean IT. The book is divided into three parts that collectively explore how people, processes, and technology combine forces to facilitate continuous improvement: * Part One: Building Blocks of the Lean Enterprise sets forth the essentials of Lean. Readers discover where, when, and how Lean IT adds substantial value to the Lean Enterprise through integrated processes of planning, scheduling, execution, control, and decision making across the full spectrum of operations. * Part Two: Building Blocks of Information Systems explores the primary components of an enterprise information system and how these components may be integrated to improve the flow of information supporting value streams. Readers learn how information systems help organize and deliver knowledge when and where it's needed. * Part Three: Managing Change with IT demonstrates how the skillful combination of process and information technology improvements empowers people to continuously improve the Lean Enterprise. Readers develop the skills to exploit emerging information technology tools and change management methods, crafting a Lean IT framework-reducing waste, complexity, and lead time-while adding measurable value. Executives, managers, and improvement teams across a broad range of industries, as well as IT professionals, can apply the techniques described in this publication to improve performance, add value, and create competitive advantage. The book's clear style and practical focus also makes it an excellent textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in business, operations management, and business information systems.




Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation, Second Edition


Book Description

Updated with new information, illustrations, and leadership tools, Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation, Second Edition describes how the metrics used by Toyota drive every line item in a financial statement in the right direction. Rather than focus on Lean tools and principles, the new edition of this bestselling reference focuses on what may be the least understood and most critical aspect of a Lean transformation: the building of a Lean culture. In addition to new appendices with background information and insightful stories on Lean leadership and implementation, it includes new information on tactical organization practices, strategy deployment, and Lean culture. An inductee to IndustryWeek's Hall of Fame, George Koenigsaecker illustrates successful strategies and valuable lessons learned with case histories of U.S. leaders who have been instrumental in bringing Lean to the forefront. He explains the use of value stream analysis at the leadership level and describes how to structure kaizen events that can improve the value stream. Organized in the chronological sequence that a leader embarking on a Lean journey would experience, the book discusses the methods used by the author during the Hon Company’s successful Lean conversion, which doubled productivity, tripled revenues, and led IndustryWeek to recognize Hon as one of the "World’s 100 Best Managed Firms." The book not only introduces powerful leadership tools—including strategy deployment, transformation value stream analysis, and transformation plan of care—but also arms potential change agents with the soft skills needed to define, develop, and communicate their vision. Detailing the steps required to sustain improvements, it supplies time-tested guidance for effective leadership throughout a Lean transformation in any organization.




Lean Enterprise


Book Description




Evolving Excellence


Book Description

A categorized compilation of favorite posts from the Evolving Excellence blog, Evolving Excellence: Thoughts on Lean Enterprise Leadership offers different-even outright contradictory-viewpoints that explore various aspects of lean enterprise excellence. In the shared desire to see American manufacturing thrive, authors Kevin Meyer and Bill Waddell have poured their knowledge, opinions, and ideas into their blog for the past two years. Sometimes tongue in cheek, usually provocative, occasionally humorous, but always passionate, they point out the failures of companies, organizations, and individuals in the manufacturing industry while also lauding those that understand true excellence. In Evolving Excellence, you'll find a bevy of different topics including: - Learning from the masters of lean manufacturing - Life, liberty, and the pursuit of manufacturing - The false god of the almighty algorithm - Looking lean vs. being lean - The impending global struggle between workers and management "If you love manufacturing then we hope you're reading Evolving Excellence. It's a must-read for manufacturers and those who dream."-Pat Cleary, Senior Vice President, National Association of Manufacturers "The authors are knowledgeable and they tell it like it is."-Bob Emiliani, author of Shingo Prize winning Better Thinking, Better Results Evolving Excellence also includes a glossary of popular terms and a list of resources to help further your knowledge of excellence in manufacturing. Delve into this amazing collection, and discover the different facets of lean enterprise leadership!




The Lean Product Development Guidebook


Book Description

A practical guidebook for product development teams that describes proven tools and methods for slashing time-to-market for new products.




Lean Enterprise Value


Book Description

Lean Production transformed the way that companies think about production and manufacturing. This book provides a new challenge. It arises from the work of the Lean Aerospace Initiative at MIT and provides a new agenda and bold vision for the aerospace industry to take it out of crisis. It also redefines and develops the concept of Lean as a framework for enterprise transformation and this will be relevant and critical for all industries and enterprises.




The Lean Enterprise


Book Description

The book is divided into three parts. Part I. The Rising economy of “one” gives an overview of what is changing in the social system of production, it refers to the weakening role of central planning and the rising power of individuation in the value creation chain. Part II. Lean Enterprise in theory refers to the principles of lean thinking, the transfer of lean philosophy from East to West and discusses the necessary adaptation to the Western way of thinking and practice. It presents a practice proven method for achieving a lean integrated demand and supply chain and analyses in detail the related implementation steps. Criteria for a successful displacement of a company to a lean state are presented. Part III. Lean Enterprise in practice provides a number of implementation cases in different types of production companies using the method presented in Part II. The goal is to help the reader comprehend how the method can be applied to real lean implementation situations in resolving various issues, ranging from production to the supply chain. A vision of implementation to lean electricity completes the book.




Understanding the Lean Enterprise


Book Description

This publication is in collaboration with the University of Buckingham and is the result of a combined research and review process carried out by the three Editors who belongs to the University of Ferrara, Italy, the University of Buckingham, UK and Swansea University, UK. The book deepens the debate about the lean enterprise from both an academic and a professional management perspective. It thus provides the reader with a sound understanding of the modern lean enterprise and its current evolution. A range of innovative topics are covered, with individual chapters addressing the combinations of lean with hoshin kanri, green management, IT, organizational learning, flow accounting, system thinking, problem solving, internationalization aspects, luxury industry, and product innovation. Since the term “lean” first entered contemporary operations management language in 1990 to describe a set of practices proven to deliver superior performance over mass production systems, the lean approach to waste reduction and value generation has moved from vehicle production to other manufacturing sectors. It has reshaped the support functions of manufacturing businesses and has evolved from private industry into the public sector. Lean thinking is now a dominant model of operations management and has brought with it a new language and toolbox.




Lean Enterprise


Book Description

Are you looking for ways to eliminate wastes in your workflow? Are you having trouble figuring out how everything fits together in your business? Do you want to focus on producing only the best results at every phase of the production line? Perhaps, most importantly, are you thinking of eventually teaming up with like-minded companies to create something that ultimately changes the world for the better? If you’ve answered yes to all of these questions, then this book may have what you need to fulfill all of your business goals. All too often, many people are running their businesses without any regard for the work process and the customer. The only thing that’s important to them is their end goal: to earn massive profits. When you’re too focused on sales and numbers, you won’t be able to create the kind of product that earns your customers’ lifetime loyalty. It will keep you from seeing that the seemingly effective workflows that you’ve always used are largely wasteful and inefficient. Fortunately, going lean can help you change all of that. Lean is a customer-centric approach that aims to meet customer demands exactly at their moment of need. While it may sound altruistic on the surface, putting a higher regard on the customer ultimately means better income for your business. By making them your top priority, your company wouldn’t end up being a one-hit wonder that never truly understood what the market needs in the first place. Here are a few things that you can get from this book: How lean thinking transforms businesses How to identify wastes in your current workflow How shifting to lean can be worth it Proven methodologies for going lean And much more Now, you may be wondering whether lean is actually better than your current system. After all, when things are going well enough in your business, why is there a need for change? Thing is, even if things are going perfectly, there will always be that one thing that you can improve on. A simple assessment of your workflow can be all it takes to make your entire system a lot more efficient. Just imagine how much more you can do when you have it all figured out. If you think that everything is already fine as it is, lean will make you realize that the future can always be better than yesterday. The changes that you need to implement are all in your hands. Transform your business into a lean machine and watch your workforce deliver the quality products that you’ve always wanted to be known for! What are you waiting for? Scroll up and click “Buy Now” today!