Lean in a High-Variability Business PDF Download

Author: Eduardo Lander
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 042975972X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"John Dewey famously pointed out, 'We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.' Here's your chance to learn as the three authors reflect on the (successful) struggle to build a Lean production and management system at Zingerman's Mail Order. Thousands of people visit and benchmark ZMO. This book delivers the backstory in a richly illustrated way." -- Mike Rother, author of the bestselling books Toyota Kata and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide This clever and highly engaging graphic novel details a story about one organization’s Lean journey with inspiration from the Toyota Way. Over the years, common misunderstandings about what Lean is, what the journey is like, and how to advance have proliferated. Often, these misunderstandings come from the way people simplistically talk and think about Lean as if it is some concrete thing that you insert into an organization and step back to watch the results. The authors, however, view the organization as a living system with interacting parts and constant exposure to the environment. It is dynamic, so it’s hard to predict what obstacles you will face next. Just when you think you have it solved, new challenges arise from the market, competitors, government regulations, and every direction you turn to. When you look at your organization in this way, you see Lean through a different lens. The goal is to make your processes and people into a more adaptive system so you can navigate through all the complexity and uncertainty to continually achieve your goals. This is how Toyota views things and they summarize the Toyota Way as continuous improvement and respect for people. Each person becomes a partner in struggling to learn and adapt, and specific tools are used in very different ways throughout the company to accomplish their goals. The story presented here focuses on a small company called Zingerman’s Mail Order (ZMO). Tom Root was one of the founders of this spin-off of the Zingerman’s delicatessen. The deli was founded to bring high-quality artisanal food to Ann Arbor, Michigan. The purpose of this book is not to provide a "recipe for implementation" – the authors want you to get a feeling for the struggle, for the learning process. They explain and demonstrate many Lean tools within the context of the journey and how they were adapted for this particular business. Toyota kata became the centerpiece of developing scientific thinking skills to begin to bring continuous improvement to life.

Author: Sylvain Landry
Publisher: Editions JFD
ISBN: 2897993502
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
FACING CHALLENGING GOALS AND UNPREDICTABLE PATHS? PRACTICE SCIENTIFIC THINKING! Your team’s ability to learn and adapt is paramount, and scientific thinking is the key to unlocking this invaluable skill. The bad news: It's not our natural default position as adults. The good news: There’s a simple and proven approach to developing it in any organization or team—including yours—called Toyota Kata. Professor Sylvain Landry lays out a straightforward management practice that enables each level of your organization to apply scientific ways of thinking and working, to achieve whatever goals you’re pursuing. “This book is that good!!! I can’t wait to have leaders read it! Sylvain shares his journey with Kata in a way that transported me into it. He brings a clear understanding and a powerful message on how to go about it, in a short and easy-to-read format. I consider this essential reading for anyone looking to start scientific-thinking practice in their organization.” – Tony Hren, Senior Director,Danaher Business System, Danaher Corporation “A practical and easily digestible book on Toyota Kata that’s perfect for our managers and their teams.” – Kasper Bødker Mejlvang, General Manager,Novo Nordisk Denmark & Iceland “If I'd had this book before I got into Kata it would have increased my understanding of how to get started. A great precursor to initial training and practice.” – Andrea Simpson, Senior Operations Director and Process Improvement, NEA Baptist Health System “As a leader of an organization, the challenge of improving is hard to sustain. This MUST-read book highlights how top organizations fuel their journey, and even enjoy the trip, by managers shepherding practice of scientific thinking in their teams.” – Dan Bergeron, President & CEO of SigmaPoint Technologies “A compact book every manager who wants to coach high performance should read. Take it along on your next flight.” – Professor Jeffrey Liker, author of the bestseller The Toyota Way “We develop many thinking habits at work, which makes the workplace the world’s largest classroom and managers its teachers. What skills and mindset are you conveying in your team? Read this book and realize how important your work with your team is.” – Mike Rother, author of the bestselling Learning to See,Toyota Kata and The Toyota Kata Practice Guide

Author: Tilo Schwarz
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000865363
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Denise dreamed of being the kind of leader who empowered and engaged her people, but was becoming frustrated and disillusioned. Denise -- a fast-rising, young consultant at a large advisory firm -- lands a job as a manager in industry. Crisis strikes as low-cost competitors take market share and general chaos generates late shipments. Denise goes into Lean consulting mode but quickly learns her supervisors are not buying it. They're not engaged, and they find the Lean tools confusing and a distraction from their goals of getting product out. It's going to take some magic -- magic that's available to you, the reader, too! Come with Denise on a journey of discovery and skill development, as she moves beyond the tools and concepts of Lean and focuses on daily practice that helps her supervisors achieve their goals. It's about an approach called Toyota Kata that helps anyone develop and apply scientific thinking -- an exploratory mindset of curiosity and experimentation. A mentor from an unlikely place appears and shares with Denise how to coach her team. Once her supervisors dig into real problems they face every day, they begin to engage. Step by step, with insightful inputs from her mentor, Denise starts developing the skills to become a coaching manager. She watches her team meet their current challenges and be ready for more. When you teach and practice scientific thinking and coaching skills you give wings to your team, and new worlds of opportunity open up. If you're a manager you'll identify with how the team in this story goes beyond general preaching about best practices, to practicing how to get to where they want to be. If you're a Lean practitioner frustrated with applying tools with a limited half life, you'll learn how to develop people so they can achieve their most important goals and keep going. And if you're already a Toyota Kata practitioner, well ... you will love this book!

Author: Sanjeev Agrawal
Publisher: Forbesbooks
ISBN: 9781950863341
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
GETTING A DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT SHOULDN'T BE HARDER THAN BOOKING A VACATION The US healthcare system excels in research, innovation, and clinical care, but is failing to keep up with the operational challenges of the digital age. Today's healthcare organizations face immense financial challenges, and their most valuable resources--people, rooms, and equipment--are being used inefficiently. The result? Long wait times for patients, overstressed staff, underused assets, and poor ROI for organizations. Why do health systems struggle with optimization? The fundamental problem is one of matching an unpredictable demand for services with a constrained supply. The math being used to solve this problem is a holdover from the paper-and-pencil era. In Better Healthcare Through Math, authors Mohan Giridharadas and Sanjeev Agrawal show you that there is a better way. Healthcare systems can harness the power of sophisticated, analytics-driven mathematics to optimize the matching of supply and demand. By upgrading to software systems built on better math, they can enable staff to make data-based decisions to flatten peaks of demand and create smoother patient flow.

Author: Eduardo Lander
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000958639
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
After decades of implementing Lean tools, organizations are getting serious about the heart and soul of Lean management. They are developing people to continuously improve. Most of the Lean tools, such as kanban, andon, and visual management, are designed to surface problems so you know what to work on to achieve your goal. Engaged, scientific-thinking team members solve them one by one. Toyota’s underlying assumption is that the world is complex and uncertain, and we never have the perfect solution, so whatever is implemented needs continual refinement as we learn and as the marketplace changes. If we can’t predict what is around the corner, then a key skill is being able to learn and to adapt to what appears. Where do we want to go? How can we ensure that everyone contributes to our journey? This book builds on Lean in a High-Variability Business. It is a shorter, focused introduction to developing scientific thinking through deliberate practice with Toyota Kata (TK). TK has practice routines (‘Starter Kata’) for both the learner trying to change how they approach problems to a more systematic, scientific approach, and the coach trying to teach them by helping them work toward actual goals. The focus is on the HOW of developing engaged managers and supervisors who in turn can develop an engaged workforce. There are many books about why engagement is important and descriptions of best practices, but few provide practical guidance on how to actually achieve it. And there are none in an easy-to-understand comic or graphic form. It is only through deliberate practice that we can develop a new, habitual way of thinking to avoid jumping to conclusions and let the facts and evidence guide us. Here's how one organization does it. You can too.

Author: Shantanu Bhattacharya
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811219931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
XaaS: Everything-as-a-Service: The Lean and Agile Approach to Business Growth takes the reader into the bold new world of pay-per-use for a product or service. From the perspective of the customer, the servitization model yields multiple benefits: the consumer can try out the product/service at a relatively low cost, the risk is mitigated, capital expenses can be converted into operating expenses, it is not needed to forecast how often the product/service is used, and only parts of the product/service needed can be used. Similarly, a provider can benefit by having a larger market coverage, steadier stream of revenues, upgrades as and when needed, sharing of fixed assets across consumers, practicing of value-based pricing, and unbundling or bundling utility for consumers using appropriate pricing techniques. However, this 'nanoization' of products/services is tricky, and has to be designed carefully. This book provides a set of recipes to providers to adopt the XaaS model by changing the provider's mindset: dividing the product/service forces the provider to take a value-driven approach to his product/service, and consequently, eliminate all non-value added activities. The requirements of the XaaS model serve both as an objective to the innovation and internal processes of the provider, and as guide to understanding the customer's needs. The book also covers data acquisition, data analysis and synthesis, and data application needs of the XaaS model, with simple examples and case studies from the business world of firms that achieve these objectives successfully.

Author: Mark O. George
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470606568
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Create New Profits in Any Economy In this difficult economic climate, it's vital to cut waste that can eat at a company's bottom line and boost efficiency at every organizational level. The traditional business solution in a crisis is to slash away non-critical talent and resources, often doing more harm than good. There is a far better systematic approach to doing more with less. As a leading expert on Lean Six Sigma and business transformation, with a deep knowledge of its application in countless areas of business, author Mark George can help you use Lean Six Sigma to analyze your operational needs, identify high-impact opportunities, design and rapidly implement solutions, and create a system that will build efficiency and high performance in every area of your business. The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More with Less can help you: Improve operating margins by as much as 20%, ROIC by as much as 10%, and reduce the costs of goods sold by as much as 5% or more Create "cost intelligence" that uncovers root causes allowing cost reductions without jeopardizing customer service levels and quality Use enterprise speed, agility, and flexibility to drive step-change reductions in cost and enable competitive advantage Identify and eliminate the costs of complexity in your business Supercharge your legacy Six Sigma program, improving speed to results, increasing project values, and shortening completion times With case examples from a wide array of industry, encompassing decades of experience implementing Lean Six Sigma in every economic climate, in companies of every size, The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More with Less will give your business an intelligent edge in lean times.

Author: Dee Jacob
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439181217
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Millions of readers remember The Goal, the landmark business novel that sets forth by way of story the essential principles of Eliyahu Goldratt's innovative methods of production. Now, from the AGI-Goldratt Institute and Jeff Cox, the same creative writer who co-authored The Goal, comes VELOCITY, the book that reveals how to achieve outstanding bottom-line results by integrating the world's three most powerful continuous improvement disciplines: Lean, Six Sigma, and Goldratt's Theory of Constraints. Used by the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps to dramatically improve some of the most complex, logistically vast supply chains in the world, the VELOCITY APPROACH draws on the strengths of all three disciplines to deliver breakthrough performance gains. In physics, speed with direction is velocity; in business, the application of VELOCITY means your organization can achieve operational speed with strategic direction to outmaneuver competitors, gain loyalty with customers, and rapidly build sustainable earnings growth -- in as little as one or two business quarters. Dee Jacob and Suzan Bergland, two princi-pals of AGI, have been teaching the concepts, techniques, and tools of VELOCITY to major corporations, including Procter & Gamble, ITT, and Northrop Grumman, for years. Now they unlock the door for you to see how to apply their insights and methods to your organization -- be it business, not-for-profit, manufacturing, or service based -- in order to shorten lead times, slash inventories, reduce production variability, and increase sales. Writer Jeff Cox returns with the vivid, realistic style that made The Goal so readable yet so edifying. Thrust into the presidency of the subsidiary company where she has managed sales and marketing, Amy Cieolara is mandated by her corporate superiors to implement Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in order to appease a key customer. Assigned to help her is LSS Master Black Belt Wayne Reese, installed as her operations manager. But as time goes on and corporate pressure mounts, Amy finds she has to start thinking for herself -- and learning from everyone around her -- and she arrives at the series of steps that form the core of the VELOCITY APPROACH. VELOCITY offers keen insight into the human and organizational factors that so often derail growth while teaching you proven, practical techniques for restarting and revving up the internal engines of your company to reach new levels of success. Colorful characters, believable situations, and everything from dice games to AGI's "reality tree" techniques make this business novel a vital resource for everyone seeking to deliver business improvement in these challenging economic times -- and far into the future.

Author: James P. Womack
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471111008
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Author: Donald Reinertsen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684839911
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of Developing Products in Half the Time, this book presents a comprehensive approach to managing design-in-process inventory.