What is in Creating Lean Dealers? Creating Lean Dealers is a DIY guide to enable dealers to achieve such a step-change for themselves. It works through, using examples, diagrams and detailed instructions, how to transform performance in service and repair. Then it goes on to describe how the same logic can be applied to all other areas of the dealer business to give a win-win-win for customers, dealer staff and shareholders. The journey to becoming a Lean dealer begins by getting a real understanding of two things: The ability of the processes in the dealership to deliver right first time on time at every step - a measure that authors David Brunt and John Kiff call ‘Customer Fulfilment’ because it is the core of what customers value. The actual demand on those processes and separating it into different types. The next step is to use these measures, together with a map of the ‘current state’ of the process, to define and prioritise what the problems are and then address them, with the teams who do the work, in a structured way using the Plan-Do-Check-Act method of improvement. A series of questions then guides the dealer to develop a ‘future state’ map of the process - a picture of what the process will look like, typically in 6 months time, when the problems have been addressed and some of the wastes eliminated so that more of the time is spent creating the value that customers want - what Lean thinkers call ‘Flow’. An accompanying action plan lists the ‘bite-sized steps’ needed to achieve the transformation. But like every transformational change, management plays a critical role. Without a fully committed CEO leading from the top improvements are almost certainly doomed to fail. It soon becomes apparent that management has to question and sometimes ‘unlearn’ many of its traditional management methods. Core to this is shifting the mind-set from managing results to managing processes using visual progress boards (rather than computers) on a daily or even an hourly basis - because good results are a direct product of good processes.

Lean Thinking was launched in the fall of 1996, just in time for the recession of 1997. It told the story of how American, European, and Japanese firms applied a simple set of principles called 'lean thinking' to survive the recession of 1991 and grow steadily in sales and profits through 1996. Even though the recession of 1997 never happened, companies were starving for information on how to make themselves leaner and more efficient. Now we are dealing with the recession of 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2002. So what happened to the exemplar firms profiled in Lean Thinking? In the new fully revised edition of this bestselling book those pioneering lean thinkers are brought up to date. Authors James Womack and Daniel Jones offer new guidelines for lean thinking firms and bring their groundbreaking practices to a brand new generation of companies that are looking to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Interest in the phenomenon known as "lean" has grown significantly in recent years. This is the first volume to provide an academically rigorous overview of the field of lean management, introducing the reader to the application of lean in diverse application areas, from the production floor to sales and marketing, from the automobile industry to academic institutions. The volume collects contributions from well-known lean experts and up-and-coming scholars from around the world. The chapters provide a detailed description of lean management across the manufacturing enterprise (supply chain, accounting, production, sales, IT etc.), and offer important perspectives for applying lean across different industries (construction, healthcare, logistics). The contributors address challenges and opportunities for future development in each of the lean application areas, concluding most chapters with a short case study to illustrate current best practice. The book is divided into three parts: The Lean Enterprise Lean across Industries A Lean World. This handbook is an excellent resource for business and management students as well as any academics, scholars, practitioners, and consultants interested in the "lean world."

As consumers, we have a greater selection of higher quality goods & services to choose from, yet our experience of obtaining & using these items is more frustrating than ever. At the same time, companies find themselves with declining customer loyalty & greater challenges in fulfilling orders. This text offers solutions to these problems.

Every lean practitioner occasionally wishes for a simple, fun, and quick-read introduction to lean thinking to give acquaintances, associates, and family members -- even to our kids. If lean thinking often entails unlearning a plethora of bad habits, wouldn't it better if we learned better thinking -- and habits -- from the beginning? Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade is just that sort of book. It brings lean back to its original simplicity by showing how lean is alive in a first grade classroom. The book connects common lean tools to the broader lean journey, shows how to identify and eliminate waste, and aids the reader in seeing lean for what it truly is: a way to create a learning and problem- solving culture. Written to educate the entire organization on the fundamentals of lean thinking, this is the perfect source to engage all team members at all levels of an organization. Originally self-published in 2008, LEI is proud to re-issue this book and make it available to the broader lean community.

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.

Winner of a Shingo Research and Professional Publication AwardThe new edition of this Shingo Prize-winning bestseller provides critical insights and approaches to make any Lean transformation an ongoing success. It shows you how to implement a sustainable, successful transformation by developing a culture that has your stakeholders throughout the o

Womack and Jones deconstruct the broken producer-consumer model and show businesses how to repair it, by providing the full value consumers desire from products without wasting time or effort. Why is it that, when our computers or our cell phones fail to satisfy our needs, virtually every interaction with help lines, support centers, or any organization providing service is marked with wasted time and extra hassle? In their bestselling business classic Lean Thinking, James Womack and Daniel Jones introduced the world to the principles of lean production—principles for eliminating waste during production. Now, in Lean Solutions, the authors establish the groundbreaking principles of lean consumption, showing companies how to eliminate inefficiency during consumption. Lean Solutions is full of surprising success stories: Fujitsu, a leading service company for technology, has transformed the way call centers solve problems—learning how to eliminate the underlying cause of current problems rather than fixing them again and again. An extremely successful car dealership has adopted lean principles to streamline its business, making for dramatically reduced wait time, fewer return trips, and greater satisfaction for customers—and a far more lucrative enterprise. Lean Solutions will inspire managers to take the first steps toward perfecting their company's process of giving consumers what they really want.

When James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos wrote THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD in 1990, Japanese automakers, and Toyota in particular, were making a strong showing by applying the principles of lean production. However, the full power of lean principles was unproven, and they had not been applied outside of the auto industry. Today, the power of lean production has been conclusively proved by Toyota's unparalleled success, and the concepts have been widely applied in many industries. Based on MIT's pioneering global study of industrial competition, THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD offers a groundbreaking analysis of the entire lean business system, including product development, supplier management, sales, service, and production - an analysis even more relevant today as GM and Ford struggle to survive and a wide range of British abd American companies embrace lean production. A new Foreword by the authors brings the story up to date and details how their predictions were right. As a result, this reissue of a classic is as insightful and instructive today as when it was first published.