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Expanded, updated, and more relevant than
ever, this bestselling business classic by two internationally
renowned management analysts describes a business system
for the twenty-first century that supersedes the mass production
system of Ford, the financial control system of Sloan, and
the strategic system of Welch and GE. It is based on the
Toyota (lean) model, which combines operational excellence
with value-based strategies to produce steady growth through
a wide range of economic conditions.
In contrast with the crash-and-burn performance
of companies trumpeted by business gurus in the 1990s, the
firms profiled in Lean Thinking -- from tiny Lantech
to midsized Wiremold to niche producer Porche to gigantic
Pratt & Whitney -- have kept on keeping on, largely
unnoticed, along a steady upward path through the market
turbulence and crushed dreams of the early twenty-first
century. Meanwhile, the leader in lean thinking -- Toyota
-- has set its sights on leadership of the global motor
vehicle industry in this decade.
Instead of constantly reinventing reinventing
business models, lean thinkers go back to basics by asking
what the customer really perceives as value. (It's
often not at all what existing organizations and assets
would suggest.) The next step is to line up value-creating
activities for a specific product along a value stream
while eliminating activities (usually the majority) that
don't add value. Then the lean thinker creates a flow
condition in which the design and the product advance smoothly
and rapidly at the pull of the customer (rather than
the push of the producer). Finally, as flow and pull are
implemented, the lean thinker speeds up the cycle of improvement
in pursuit of perfection. The first part of this
book describes each of these concepts and makes them come
alive with striking examples.
Lean Thinking clearly demonstrates
that these simple ideas can breathe new life into any company
in any industry in any country. But most managers need guidance
on how to make the lean leap in their firm. Part II provides
a step-by-step action plan, based on in-depth studies of
more than fifty lean companies in a wide range of industries
across the field.
Even those readers who believe they have
embraced lean thinking will discover in Part III that another
dramatic leap is possible by creating an extended lean enterprise
for each of their product families that tightly links value-creating
activities from raw materials to customer.
In Part IV, an epilogue to the original
edition, the story of lean thinking is brought up-to-date
with an enhanced action plan based on the experiences of
a range of lean firms since the original publication of
Lean Thinking.
Lean Thinking does not provide a
new management "program" for the one-minute manager.
Instead, it offers a new method of thinking, of being, and,
above all, of doing for the serious long-term manager --
a method that is changing the world.
James Womack and Daniel Jones have collaborated
on analyses of global industrial trends for more than twenty
years. They are coauthors of The Machine That Changed
the World, Seeing the Whole, and The Future
of the Automobile.
Womack is founder and president of the
Lean Enterprise Institute (www.lean.org), a nonprofit education
and research organization based in Brookline, Massachusetts,
dedicated to the spread of lean thinking.
Jones is founder and chairman of the
Lean Enterprise Academy in the U.K. (www.leanuk.org), a
nonprofit organization affiliated with the Lean Enterprise
Institute and pursuing the same objectives in English-speaking
Europe.
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