Written by one of the world’s most respected consultants on Lean, this work presents a methodology for value stream mapping that is appropriate for any organization, whether it be service or product oriented. Over the past 25 years, Locher has proven just how powerful this process is, having employed it in healthcare, transportation, distribution, education, financial services, and manufacturing environments. Illustrating his methodology through the example of the imaginary DevelopTek company, he explains how to: Identify development waste Assess an organization’s current state and develop a Current State Map Apply Lean principles to create a Future State Map

Lean production is the gold standard in production systems, but has proven famously difficult to implement in North America. Mass production relies on large inventories, uses "push" processes and struggles with long lead times. Moving towards a system that eliminates muda ("waste") caused by overproduction, while challenging, proves necessary for improved efficiency. Often overlooked, value stream mapping is the essential planning stage for any Lean transformation. In Mike Rother and John Shook's essential guide, you follow the value stream mapping undertaken for Acme Stamping, for its current and future state. Fully illustrated and well-organized, Learning to See is a must-see for the value stream manager.

The first of its kind—a Value Stream Mapping book written for those in service and office environments who need to streamline operations Value Stream Mapping is a practical, how-to guide that helps decision-makers improve value stream efficiency in virtually any setting, including construction, energy, financial service, government, healthcare, R&D, retail, and technology. It gives you the tools to address a wider range of important VSM issues than any other such book, including the psychology of change, leadership, creating teams, building consensus, and charter development. Karen Martin is principal consultant for Karen Martin & Associates, LLC, instructor for the University of California, San Diego's Lean Enterprise program, and industry advisor to the University of San Diego's Industrial and Systems Engineering program. Mike Osterling provides support and leadership to manufacturing and non-manufacturing organizations on their Lean Transformation Journey. In a continuous improvement leadership role for six years, Mike played a key role in Square D Company's lean transformation in the 1990s.

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as “post-mortems”) are only held at the end of the project—too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today. Now Esther and Diana show you the tools, tricks and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You’ll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes and how to scale these techniques up. You’ll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project—not just at the end. This book will help you: Design and run effective retrospectives Learn how to find and fix problems Find and reinforce team strengths Address people issues as well as technological Use tools and recipes proven in the real world With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.

The standard belief in books about Lean initiatives and value stream mapping (VSM) is that VSM works well on transactional processes (which are primarily linear processes where handoffs are well defined and the outcome is known) and it is useful for repetitive projects or products. This book counters these statements by clearly demonstrating how a VSM exercise can be successfully performed in complex, multifunctional environments involving nonrepetitive work, such as aircraft new product development, custom engineering, software development and project management. The methodology described in this book is the result of more than ten years of refinement and is based on practice while working with multidisciplinary teams and helping them achieve their goals. This is a novel approach to capturing the information flow in a VSM by recognizing it as the place where most of the issues are generated, especially for the previously mentioned environments and the fact that classical mapping methodologies (including classical VSM) do not capture it well. The VSM methodology that the author developed goes to the essence of a VSM (activities flow, information flow, timeline), uses conventional VSM icons and some custom information flow icons and helps the following: Quantifying waste (VSM literature gap) Making disconnects visible (VSM literature gap) Making behavioral and cultural patterns visible (VSM literature gap) If the steps are followed thoroughly, then lead time reductions ranging from 60% to 88% are achieved, along with increased availability of resources, more output with the same resources, projects delivered on time and, most importantly, colleagues embracing the Lean mindset, which greatly contributes to maintaining the gains. Essentially, this book helps readers perform a VSM in environments where multiple stakeholders interact with each other to deliver a product or a service with unclear aspects, such as what the product/service is, how all involved can contribute to the product or service transformation and how the interactions between them occur. For example, the products/services targeted in this book include test results, analysis results, a custom design, a process, a methodology, an engineering change, integrated enterprise software and engineering drawings. Concurrently, this book helps readers map behavioral patterns, such as micromanagement, and company culture aspects, such as excessive governance and "decisions by committee."

"Winner of the 2005 Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research" Most lean initiatives conducted by manufacturers are focused mostly on shop-floor activities — mapping the value stream of raw material to the shop-floor customer. Much of the untapped potential for productivity improvements lies, however, in non-production areas — where the value stream is administrative (i.e., "order to cash"). These "office" value streams directly support the daily production needs of an enterprise. Beau Keyte and Drew Locher's new book, The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes, offers a step-by-step approach to applying lean initiatives to the administrative and office environment. It's a must read for leaders looking to improve their production support activities within their order-to-cash value stream. The Complete Lean Enterprise is a valuable tool in applying value stream mapping (VSM) to non-production areas, identifying office wastes, establishing performance metrics, speeding up administrative workflow, and improving office efficiency.

With 14 new definitions touching on management, healthcare, startups, manufacturing, and service, the 5th edition of the Lean Lexicon, is the most comprehensive edition yet of the handy and practical glossary for lean thinkers. The latest Lexicon, updated in 2014, contains 60+ graphics and 207 terms from A3 Report to Yokoten. The Lexicon covers such key lean terms as andon, jidoka, kaizen, lean consumption, lean logistics, pull, plan-for- every-part, standardized work, takt time, value-stream mapping, and many more. The new terms are: • Basic Stability • Coaching • Gemba Walk • Huddle • Kamishibai Board • Kata • Leader Standard Work • Lean Management • Lean Management Accounting • Lean Startup • Problem Solving • Service Level Agreement • Training Within Industry (TWI) • Value-stream Improvement Unlike most other business glossaries in print or online, the Lexicon, introduced in January 2003, is focused exclusively on lean thinking and practice. Like the past four, the fifth edition of the Lean Lexicon incorporates terms and improvement ideas from our customers. We continue to welcome suggestions from the growing lean community in its traditional industries and beyond.

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives helps you and your teams to do retrospectives effectively and efficiently. It's a toolbox with many exercises for facilitating retrospectives, supported with the "what" and "why" of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they bring, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. If you are a Scrum master, agile coach, project manager, product manager or facilitator then this book helps you to discover and apply new ways to do Valuable Agile Retrospectives with your teams. With plenty of exercises you can develop your own personal Retrospectives Toolbox to become more proficient in doing retrospectives and get more out of them.

In this book, author Nate Furuta, former chair and CEO of Toyota Boshoku America Inc., shares the story of his decades of experience directly leading the establishment of Toyota cultures outside Japan. Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), Toyota’s joint venture in California with General Motors, where he directly led the establishment of the most revolutionary labor-management agreement in the history of the US auto industry. In addition, Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground in Georgetown Kentucky at Toyota’s first full-scale, wholly owned manufacturing operation outside Japan, where he led (working directly with President Fujio Cho) the establishment of Toyota’s general management systems and culture there. This book tells the stories of establishing successful operations in those two iconic organizations as well as others. Furuta reveals details, both stories and process descriptions that only he can tell. He takes you along as he and others lead Toyota’s intense globalization from the early 1980s to recent days. He introduces you to the critical leaders in Toyota's history, such as Taiichi Ohno and Fujio Cho as well as Kenzo Tamai, the head of the company’s HRM function in the 1980s. This book is not about human-resource management (HRM) policies and procedures. It provides a deep dive into the way senior leaders embody deep awareness of HRM matters, developing and executing company strategy while at the same time developing organizational capability. The role of senior leaders isn’t just a matter of directing the company to achieve objectives; it is a matter of building the capability to achieve those objectives, consistently, and further developing capability as it executes. Key to this is to develop the awareness, attitude, capability, and practice of identifying problems as progress is made toward achieving objectives, which is, in fact, attained through steadily eliminating each problem as it arises. This becomes a self-reinforcing loop of the organization, tapping in to the essence of solving problems while simultaneously developing ever better problem-solving skills and better problem solvers. This loop propels an organization toward meeting its purpose while developing capability for capability development. Essentially, this book reveals Toyota’s general management systems from the firsthand experience of a Toyota Japanese senior manager and describes, with stories and process examples, the attitude, behaviors, and systems needed to successfully establish and lead in a true Lean business environment.