"Readers of "Story of a Lean Journey" will empathize with the plight of Allison Manufacturing Services (AMS), a small manufacturer struggling to survive global competition and specialization to the point where it is trying to be everything to everyone. Its board of directors is disheartened with the downward spiral of profits, continuing loss of market share, and lackluster performance of "flavor of the month" initiatives. Looking for a way to save the company, the board hires Bill Watts, a lean consultant, as its new executive vice president. But the story just begins here. Knowing that a successful lean journey requires a culture shift that must begin at the top, Bill must rally the support of the board members who are, of course, skeptical as to what lean will bring to the bottom line. But the change in thinking required to make lean implementation successful is only the beginning. "Story of a Lean Journey" will take you through the first three-years of lean application at AMS. But read the story for yourself, it doesn't end there either."--Publisher.

In the current climate attention has refocused on lean production. While books have looked at the principles of lean production and techniques, this book from McKinsey & Company, the world's most influential management consultancy, provides a unique approach, which is holistic in nature and argues that lean must be central to the strategy and mindset of the company or organization. It will be the most comprehensive book on the tangible and intangible aspects of lean transformation with a complete overview of how organizations should embark upon this arising from the cutting edge work done by t.

Every healthcare organization can learn from Seattle Children‘s continuous improvement process, but this book is not an operator‘s manual. Instead, it is a challenge to everyone concerned with healthcare to reexamine deeply held assumptions. While it is commonly believed that improved quality, access, and safety, and an improved bottom line are mut

This book presents a series of high performance product design (PD) and development best practices that can create or improve product development organization. In contrast to other books that focus only on Toyota or other individual companies applying lean IPD, this book explains the lean philosophy more broadly and includes discussions of systems engineering, design for X (DFX), agile development, integrated product development, and project management. The “Lean Journey” proposed here takes a value-centric approach, where the lean principles are applied to PD to allow the tools and methods selected to emerge from observation of the individual characteristics of each enterprise. This means that understanding lean product development (LPD) is not about knowing which tools are available but knowing how to apply the philosophy. The book comes with an accompanying manual with problems and solutions available on Springer Extras.