The philosophy of kaizen, which simply means continuous improvement, needs to adopted by any organization seeking to implement lean improvements that go beyond cost cutting. Kaizen events are opportunities to make focused changes in the workplace. Kaizen for the Shopfloor takes readers through the critical steps for conducting a very effective kaizen event: one that is well planned, well implemented, and well documented. As the newest addition to the Shingo Prize Winning Shopfloor Series, Kaizen for the Shopfloor distills the complexities of jump starting lean processes into an easily accessible format for those frontline employees who make lean possible. About the Shopfloor Series: Put proven improvement tools in the hands of your entire workforce! Progressive shopfloor improvement techniques are imperative for manufacturers who want to stay competitive and to achieve world class excellence. And it's the comprehensive education of all shopfloor workers that ensures full participation and success when implementing new programs. The Shopfloor Series books make practical information accessible to everyone by presenting major concepts and tools in simple, clear language and at a reading level that has been adjusted for operators by skilled instructional designers. One main idea is presented every two to four pages so that the book can be picked up and put down easily. Each chapter begins with an overview and ends with a summary section. Helpful illustrations are used throughout.
To compete successfully in today’s economy, organizations need to be as good as or better than their global competitors. This goes not only for quality, but also for costs and cycle times (lead time, processing time, delivery time, set-up time, response time, etc.). Lean addresses these needs in its emphasis on teamwork, continuous training and learning, produce to demand (“pull”), mass customization and batch size reduction, cellular flow, quick changeover, and total productive maintenance. Originally applied in manufacturing settings, lean has now migrated to non-shop floor activities: in business support functions, such as sales, customer service, accounting, human resources, engineering, purchasing; within manufacturing firms; and also in purely service areas like finance, government, and healthcare. The intended audience for this book is any quality or operational professional who wants to start their lean journey or enhance their career opportunities. After introducing the concepts of lean and kaizen, various building blocks of a lean enterprise are described. After reading this book, any reader will have a foundation of what is understood today as "lean." All the examples of kaizens presented in the book are from the authors' experience associated with real lean transformations. In addition, the forms, figures, and checklists included as part of this book and also on the accompanying CD-ROM can be customized and used in the readers’ own lean journey when they perform kaizens. COMMENTS FROM OTHER CUSTOMERS Average Customer Rating: (4 of 5 based on 1 review) "This book gives a great introduction to kaizen, along with a sensible "how to" and several case studies across various industries, including for non-manufacturing applications. It also gives a good introduction to Lean in general, and it places enough emphasis on the "human side" of implementing Lean so that the reader walks away with an understanding that the Lean tools may be fairly simple but the implementation of them requires special attention to human nature and the associated challenges. It is easy to read and comprehend. Plenty of pictures and samples are provided. This could easily be used as a training tool for employees who will be serving on kaizen teams." A reader in Bradenton, Florida
Der Kaizen Blitz ist eine Methode, mit deren Hilfe eine enorme Produktivitätssteigerung auf allen Ebenen eines Unternehmens erzielt werden kann. Sie verspricht eine rasche und durchschlagende Verbesserung der Ergebnisse um 40-50%. Hier wird dieser Ansatz genau analysiert und gezeigt, wie Kaizen zur Erzielung schneller Resultate eingesetzt wird. Diskutiert werden notwendige Vorbereitung, mögliche Hindernisse, die es zu vermeiden gilt und die zu erwartenden Ergebnisse. Mit Erfolgszahlen und Anwendungbeispielen von amerikanischen Spitzenunternehmen wie z.B. NorthWest Airlines und United Tool & Die. (y02/99)
When it comes to making your business more profitable and successful, don't look to re-engineering for answers. A better way is to apply the concept of kaizen, which mean making simple, common-sense improvements and refinements to critical business processes.The result: greater productivity, quality, and profits achieved with minimal cost, time, and effort invested. In this book, you discover how to maximize the results of kaizen by applying it to gemba--business processes involved in the manufacture of products and the rendering of services--the areas of your business where, as the author puts it, the "real action" takes place.
It is easy to learn the philosophy and the concepts of kaizen. It is quite another challenge to translate the philosophy into action. While most books expound on the underlying principles and theory, Kaizen Assembly: Designing, Constructing, and Managing a Lean Assembly Line takes you step-by-step through an actual kaizen event. This approach demon
Toyota Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement focuses on the skills and techniques practiced inside Toyota Motor Corporation during the past decades. This workbook focuses on the actual training course concepts and methods used by Toyota to develop employee skill level, a core element of Toyota’s success. It is not a book about holding Western-style five-day Kaizen events, which were in reality quite rare during the development of Toyota’s production system and are virtually nonexistent today inside Toyota. Written by two of Toyota’s most revered and experienced trainers, the book — Traces the origins of Kaizen since the inception of Toyota Motor Corporation Articulates the basic six-step Kaizen improvement skills pattern taught inside Toyota Helps practitioners of Kaizen improve their own skill level and confidence by simplifying concepts and removing any mystery in the process Provides homework assignments and a wealth of forms for analyzing work processes If you take the time to study the concepts detailed here, you will be reviewing the same methods and techniques that were harnessed by generations of Toyota supervisors, managers, and engineers. These techniques are not the secret ingredient of Lean manufacturing; however, mastery of these timeless techniques will improve your ability to conduct improvement in almost any setting and generate improvement results for your organization.
In this first comprehensive departure from the time-and-motion dictums of Frederick Taylor's Shop Management that have influenced management practices for most of this century, Kiyoshi Suzaki offers a framework for successfully conducting business at its most crucial point-the shop floor. Drawing on the principles of holistic management, where organizational boundaries are smashed and co-destiny is created, Suzaki demonstrates how modern shop floor management techniques -- focusing maximum energy on the front line -- can lead to dramatic improvements in productivity and valueadded-to-services. The role of management today, Suzaki argues, is to eliminate its own responsibilities by thinking of the organization from the genba, or shop floor, point of view. In this challenge, Suzaki claims, organizations need to collect the wisdom of people by practicing "Glass Wall Management," where organizations become transparent, enabling employees to contribute maximum creativity as opposed to blocking their potential with what he calls "Brick Wall Management." Further, to empower individuals to selfmanage their work and satisfy their customers, Suzaki asserts that they all should learn to manage their own "mini-company," where everybody is considered president of his or her area of responsibility. Front-line supervisors, Suzaki shows, must develop a mission and goals and share them both up and downstream. He cites examples of the "shop floor point of view" -- McDonald's Corporation's legal staff learning how to sell hamburgers and fix milkshake machines; Honda's human resource staff training on the assembly line -- that narrow the gap between top management and the shop floor. By upgrading people's skills, focusing on empowerment, and streamlining processes, Suzaki illustrates that an organization will realize concrete improvements in quality, cost, delivery, safety, morale, and ultimately, its competitive position.
Are you ready to implement a just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing program but need some help orienting employees to the power of JIT? Here is a concise and practical guide to introduce equipment operators, assembly workers, and other frontline employees to the basic concepts, techniques, and benefits of JIT practices. Like all Shop Floor Series books, Just-in-Time for Operators presents concepts and tools in simple and accessible language. The book includes ample illustrations and examples to explain basic JIT concepts and some of the changes people may encounter in a JIT implementation. Key definitions Elimination of process waste Leveled production, kanban, and standard work U-shaped cells and autonomation JIT support techniques The JIT approach is simple and universal -- it works in companies all over the world. Educating employees ensures their full participation and allows them to share their experiences and ideas more effectively.
In this groundbreaking sequel to The Gold Mine, authors Michael and Freddy Ballé present a compelling story that teaches readers the most important lean lesson of all: how to transform themselves and their workers through the discipline of learning the lean system. The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation reveals how individuals can go beyond the short-term gains from tools, and realize a deeper, sustainable path of improvement. Full of human moments that capture the excitement and drama of lean implementation, as well as clear explanations of how tools and systems go hand-in-hand, this book will teach and inspire every person working to make lean a reality in their organization today. This book will help you learn both the how of doing lean, as well as the why behind the tools, enabling you to become lean. Lean is the most important business model for competitive success today. Yet companies still struggle to sustain enduring and deep-rooted business success from their lean implementation efforts. The most important problem for these companies is becoming lean: how can they advance beyond realizing isolated gains from deploying lean tools, to fundamentally changing how they operate, think, and learn? In other words, how can companies learn to go beyond lean turnaround to achieve lean transformation? The Lean Manager: A Novel of Lean Transformation, by lean experts Michael and Freddy Ballé, addresses this critical problem. As we move from what Jim Womack, author, lean management authority, and LEI founder, calls “the era of lean tools to the era of lean management,” The Lean Manager gives companies a definitive guide for sustaining their ability to learn and improve operations and financial performance, while continually developing people. “The only way to become and stay lean is to produce lean managers,” says Womack. “Every isolated effort will recede—or fail—unless companies learn to use the lean process as a way of developing individual problem-solvers with the ownership, initiative, and know-how to solve problems, learn, and ultimately coach new individuals in this discipline. That’s why this book matters so much.” The Lean Manager, the sequel to the Ballé’s international bestselling business novel The Gold Mine, tells the compelling story of plant manager Andrew Ward as he goes through the challenging but rewarding journey to becoming a lean manager. Under the guidance of Phil Jenkinson (whose own lean journey was at the core of The Gold Mine), Ward learns to use a deep understanding of lean tools, as well as a technical know-how of his plant’s operations, to foster a lean attitude that sustains continuous improvement. Where The Gold Mine shows you how to introduce a complete lean system, The Lean Manager demonstrates how to sustain it. Ward moves beyond fluency with tools to changing his behavior as a manager and leader. He shifts from giving orders and answers to asking the right questions so people identify and address problems. He learns how to use tools to unleash the creativity and motivation of people, so they learn how to solve problems as well as coach and teach others to solve problems. Ward learns how to create lean managers. “I am excited and have hopes that this book will enlighten readers about what it really means to live a business transformation that puts customers first and does this through developing people,” said Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way and professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. “People who do the work have to improve the work. There are tools, but they are not tools for ‘improving the process.’ They are tools for making problems visible and for helping people think about how to solve those problems.”
What does it take to manage an organization to success? No matter what industry you are in, an organization is primarily a group of people. This book focuses on that ever-important human element. In the rush to get 'lean', many organizations focus solely on tools for increasing productivity, but where do these tools come from? In this book, Collin McLoughlin and Toshihiko Miura look back on their decades of international consulting experience to examine how organizations around the world have transformed on a cultural level by respecting the people who work within them and leveraging their creativity to solve problems. As our workforce becomes more knowledgeable, skillful, and more perceptive of their needs and wants as employees, the ability to reach the true potential of an organization becomes more and more difficult. Managers must look at each individual element of an equation like this in order to fully understand how to achieve an answer. They must begin to answer more focused questions, such as: 1. How productive is the existing work climate and culture? 2. How do employees, as individuals, navigate the existing work climate? (How do they deal with day-today issues with each other?) 3. Where and how are individuals and their work processes assessed? 4. What obstacles do employees face every day, and are they empowered to fix these obstacles? 5. What role does leadership play at each level of the organization? (Looking at the organization in layers of management.) To address these challenges, this book focuses on three main aspects of leadership and management: 1. Addressing and Improving the Perspective of Management -- The ideas presented in this book are not limited to a certain industry or field of work, but can be applied in any setting because they speak to a universal human element. 2. Exploring and Improving Work Climate -- Organizations are social entities, operating within their own controlled environment. This book will explore the factors that contribute to, and encourage, a positive work climate. 3. Observing and Eliminating Wasteful Work Processes -- Observing wasteful activities and work processes requires a refined perspective. The case studies presented illustrate the How and Why to help refine expertise. This will also lead to the joy and benefits
