Lean Bibliography

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.

Among the greatest causes of wastes are variation, poor utilisation of human potential, and managing the organisation without an appreciation of it as a system. Deming’s ideas is widely acknowledged as a major contributor to Japan’s transition to a producer of quality products. (Link to Amazon).

Fujimoto, Takahiro. The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

The word ‘Lean’ is a Western conception, but the idea originated from observing how Toyota’s production system operated. (Link to Amazon).

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox. The Goal. Abridged; 3rd Rev. Ed., 20th Anniversary ed. Minneapolis, MN: HighBridge, 2006.

Lean is about removing flow bottlenecks to help smooth the flow of value. There’s no better introduction to the phenomenon of bottlenecks than this novel by the late Goldratt. (Link to Amazon).

Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Definitive description of Toyota’s principles by a Western author. (Link to Amazon).

Liker, Jeffrey K., and Gary L. Convis. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

(Link to Amazon).

Modig, Niklas, and Pa M. This Is Lean: Resolving the Efficiency Paradox. Stockholm: Rheologica, 2012.

Short and engaging introduction to Lean. The opening example of a 500% more efficient health care is memorable. Focused on the tensions between resource availability, resource utilisation, and flow throughput, and how they can be addressed. (Link to Amazon).

Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-scale Production. Cambridge, Mass.: Productivity Press, 1988.

(Link to Amazon).

Seddon, John. Freedom from Command & Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service. New York: Productivity Press, 2005.

Recommended by the authors of “This is Lean”. (Link to Amazon).

Taylor, F. (1911). The principles of scientific management. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Though not directly about Lean, Taylor’s work began the science of scientific management – how to maximise work efficiency by maximising utilisation of resources. Depending on how you interpret maximising resource utilisation, you either end up as lean or as a heavy organisation. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together. New York, NY: Free Press, 2005.

Lean production is focused on producing goods with a minimum of waste. But what happens after you’ve produced the products?  There is a lot of waste delivering the product’s value to the customer. This book addresses that question. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Popular introduction to the concepts of Lean production. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, J., & Jones, D. (2007). The machine that changed the world: The story of lean production--Toyota's secret weapon in the global car wars that is revolutionizing world industry. New York: Free Press.

The book that introduced the Toyota Production System to the popular business literature. (Link to Amazon).

Woollard, F., & Emiliani, B. (2009). Principles of mass and flow production: Including some notes on British methods of continuous production 1925.

Recommended by the authors of “This is Lean”. (Link to Amazon).

The Keys to Success

Some thoughts on success.

There is not one key to success; there are many.  There are many doors to success.  A problem we have is that neither the doors nor the keys are labelled. We don’t know which keys opens which door. While some keys can open several of the doors, some of the doors require multiple keys. We have to try the keys we have against the doors we find.  If we're lucky, we might open one of the doors.

The key to success is remembering these three rules:

1. Have an iron determination - never be swayed.
2. Be adaptable.
3. Know which of the first two keys is applies to a situation

Success consists of first defining what you mean by success.

If at first you don't succeed, try redefining what success means

Very often, success and happiness do not go hand in hand. The same way that success and good looks don't necessarily come hand in hand. If you achieve success, you achieve success; you don’t necessarily achieve happiness.

Hello there,

Going viral as an example of how NOT to communicate to your employees that more than 12,000 of them are going to be let go, is Stephen Elop's, "Hello there," memo:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/jul14/07-17announcement2.aspx

Prediction: the phrase "pink slip" will be replaced by "'Hello there' memo", as in "They just gave me a 'Hello there' memo!"

Elop is Microsoft's EVP for Devices & Services, and was previously CEO of Nokia.