What do you think?
Rate this book
Lean Implementation
A friend of mine asked a great question in response to one of my recent Lean books. His question was in essence how do you keep Lean initiatives moving ahead and not going the way of another flavour of the month program. We have all seen managers with the best intentions launch new initiatives that were supposed to be the wave of the future only to see them fizzle out after a few weeks or months. Lean initiatives are no different. Many organizations have tried Lean and either abandon it completely or don't take it very far. So what makes the difference between companies that tried Lean and those that are leading the pack? _x000D__x000D__x000D__x000D_A successful launch of Lean is in some respects like getting lean with one's weight. There are no quick fixes. There are no easy solutions and it takes work. You cannot make a New Year's resolution to lose weight then go back to your old habits after a few weeks or months and expect to stay Lean. It takes discipline over the long haul.
174 pages, Audiobook
First published January 13, 2013
3 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 22, 2013
Every professional book I read (listen to), I try to get one thing that I can use immediately.
The topic of why Lean initiatives fail and how to prevent these failures is near and dear to my heart, so I was very excited to see a new audiobook covering this topic.
Honestly, I almost stopped listening to this book early on. The author repeatedly talks about Lean as being a “set of tools” and then goes into a multi chapter discussion on 5s being the “most important” of all lean tools. He briefly discusses the other “tools” of lean. He also discusses how kaizen is “a multi day event for improvement”.
I truly oppose his view on what Lean is. He focuses his efforts on a few of the most basic elements and seldom (if ever) refers to lean as a systematic approach. The weight he puts on 5s borders on, in my opinion, on absurd.
To clarify, I don’t disagree that 5s is important, but if this was my introduction to Lean, I would think that 5s is all I needed to know about. I worry that my CEO, COO, Plant Manager will get that message too.
To summarize, the author’s views of Lean seem similar to the short-sighted views we believed 20+ years ago when “The Machine That Changed The World” came out and “Lean” in the western world was born. Many good books that I have read in the last 3-5 years, have shifted away from tools to process or system thinking for improvement.
The second half of the book really gets into the meat and potato of what I was looking for – How to sustain and why Lean initiatives fail.
I don’t disagree with much of the topics discussed in the second half of this book, (getting ownership from top management vs relying on middle or line managers, long term objectives vs short term gain, gemba walks, etc); however, I didn’t get any revelations here.
The author shares too few real life examples to engage he reader/listener.
The author does note in a single paragraph that the way Toyota operates, improvements have become part of their culture.
In summary, this book (although an unabridged audio) felt abridged, rushed and filled with 20 year old misconceptions of what Lean is. There are no revelations and nothing new or earth shattering here.
The topic of why Lean initiatives fail and how to prevent these failures is near and dear to my heart, so I was very excited to see a new audiobook covering this topic.
Honestly, I almost stopped listening to this book early on. The author repeatedly talks about Lean as being a “set of tools” and then goes into a multi chapter discussion on 5s being the “most important” of all lean tools. He briefly discusses the other “tools” of lean. He also discusses how kaizen is “a multi day event for improvement”.
I truly oppose his view on what Lean is. He focuses his efforts on a few of the most basic elements and seldom (if ever) refers to lean as a systematic approach. The weight he puts on 5s borders on, in my opinion, on absurd.
To clarify, I don’t disagree that 5s is important, but if this was my introduction to Lean, I would think that 5s is all I needed to know about. I worry that my CEO, COO, Plant Manager will get that message too.
To summarize, the author’s views of Lean seem similar to the short-sighted views we believed 20+ years ago when “The Machine That Changed The World” came out and “Lean” in the western world was born. Many good books that I have read in the last 3-5 years, have shifted away from tools to process or system thinking for improvement.
The second half of the book really gets into the meat and potato of what I was looking for – How to sustain and why Lean initiatives fail.
I don’t disagree with much of the topics discussed in the second half of this book, (getting ownership from top management vs relying on middle or line managers, long term objectives vs short term gain, gemba walks, etc); however, I didn’t get any revelations here.
The author shares too few real life examples to engage he reader/listener.
The author does note in a single paragraph that the way Toyota operates, improvements have become part of their culture.
In summary, this book (although an unabridged audio) felt abridged, rushed and filled with 20 year old misconceptions of what Lean is. There are no revelations and nothing new or earth shattering here.
Displaying 1 of 1 review