Showing results by publisher "Lean Enterprise Institute" in All Categories

What is a lean sensei and what exactly do they do? That is the key question at the heart of this important new book sharing the secret of lean thinking, which Dan Jones calls “the alternative business model for our age”. Jones explains that “behind all the tools for operational excellence and the different management system needed to support their use, lies a much deeper challenge: to develop the human potential of everyone to create a culture of accelerating continuous improvement to meet today’s changing circumstances. Learning is at the heart of lean.”

Transforming front-line operations in a retail chain the size of Starbucks is a story in itself. This book goes further, investigating how lean thinking addressed huge demand fluctuation in a retail environment across thousands of stores, and then how baristas and managers in Newtown, Connecticut, used that system to get them through the worst week imaginable. It is a deeply personal story with global relevance.

When faced with problems, many business leaders and teams look for familiar and standard problem-solving methods, often creating unnecessary struggle, frustration, delay, and ineffectiveness in solving the problem - if it is ever solved at all! In other words, they keep reaching for the same old hammer as if every business problem were a nail.

Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade brings lean back to its original simplicity by showing how lean is alive in a first-grade classroom. The audiobook connects common lean tools to the broader lean journey, shows how to identify and eliminate waste, and aids the listener in seeing lean for what it truly is: a way to create a learning and problem-solving culture.

In 12 new essays ranging from the provocative to the practical, and written specially for the second edition of Gemba Walks, author and management expert Jim Womack reflects on the past 30 years of lean and assesses the current state of lean today.

Are you getting a true picture of your company’s performance? The disturbing answer, for most senior managers and CFOs today, is no. The culprit? Current management accounting practices produce financial statements that are unnecessarily complex and confusing. As a result, most companies are run by executives who do not fully understand their own financial information. This explosive issue and its implications are fully explored in Real Numbers.

The official podcast of the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Getting Home is the inspiring story of a defense lawyer and a school teacher who left their careers to rebuild homes for desperate survivors but wound up reconstructing the entire process for rebuilding after disasters. Authors Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg describe how SBP, the disaster relief nonprofit they founded, partnered with Toyota to apply the lean principles of the Toyota Production System to rebuild homes and lives following hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods throughout the US and its territories.