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Lean Thinking and Lean Manufacturing Articles

Lean manufacturing blog posts - articles by James Womack - lean management web sites
lean thinking and lean manufacturing books

Some of our favorite articles:

A Lean Walk Through History by Jim Womack,
"Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with its many advances and setbacks, it's easy to begin filling in some of the other milestones: By 1765, French general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had grasped the significance of standardized designs and interchangeable parts to facilitate battlefield repairs. (Actually doing this cost-effectively in practice was another matter and required another 125 years.)"

Going Lean in Health Care by James P. Womack et. al.
"Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients? the 'customers' at the heart of it all."

TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Art Smalley, Dec 2005
"In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process) as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations."

Eliminating Complexity from Work: Improving Productivity by Enhancing Quality by Tim Fuller, Aug 1985
Redesigning a process to eliminate non-value added steps. A lean thinking example from 1985.

Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck, Sep 2003
"All lean thinking starts with a re-examination of what waste is and an aggressive campaign to eliminate it. Quite simply, anything you do that does not add value from the customer perspective is waste."

Teaching the Big Box New Tricks by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Nov 2005
"The consequence, in terms of performance, is remarkable. Total "touches" on the product (each of which involves costly human effort) have been reduced from 150 to 50. The total throughput time, from the filling line at the supplier to the customer leaving the store with the cola, has declined from 20 days to five days."

The Best Factory in the World by Norman Bodek,
From his book, Kaikaku : "Pictures of areas of the factory or the office hung throughout the plant. Workers were encouraged to look at the pictures and talk about them together, then to make improvements."

Role of Management in a Lean Manufacturing Environment by Gary Convis, Jul 2001
"Since this column is meant to link automotive engineers with lean manufacturing, I would like to share my personal experience as a mechanical engineer who started out in the traditional way of manufacturing, and along the way discovered a much better way - the Toyota Production System." Gary Convis is the President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky.

The Dramatic Spread of Lean Thinking by Jim Womack, Apr 2005
"I am delighted with the spread of lean thinking far beyond the factory and far beyond the high-wage economies to every corner of the world and to every value-creating activity."

Lean Thinking and Management by John Hunter, Mar 2006 "The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart... My belief is that an organization must slowly and consistently move in the right direction. Toyota got to where it is today after many decades of continuous improvement."

The most recent article additions to our library on lean topics:

The Unnatural Environment by H Thomas Johnson, Jan 2010
"Toyota's management culture at its zenith was process-driven, not results-driven. Toyota eschewed the financial markets' absurdly impossible demand to produce higher results quarter by quarter. It rejected the idea espoused by lean authorities that a company can improve its overall performance by subtracting parts... Its pathway to higher results echoed Deming's advice, given many years ago, to improve the capability of the process, not to demand that people meet higher targets."
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CMMI or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both! by David Anderson, Hillel Glazer et. al., Nov 2008
40 page report from the Software Engineering Institute. "The purpose of this report is to clarify why the discord need not exist and to ask for your help in making the software development community aware that, when properly used together, CMMI and Agile can dramatically improve performance... When viewed holistically, CMMI's ultimate goal (i.e., continuous process improvement) is to cause an organization to become less wasteful, leaner, and more in touch with actual development progress. Ultimately, both Agile and CMMI, especially in high-trust environments, expect organizations to see gains in productivity by eliminating unnecessary effort. It's true that implementing Agile methods will often eliminate many unproductive efforts and behaviors at the project level."
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Keen to Be Lean by Josh Hyatt - CFO Magazine, Dec 2009
"Lean techniques have helped Denver Health's doctors see more patients - mainly by eliminating paperwork and rearranging offices so that the physicians don't have to do as much walking. In just one clinic, such moves have generated an extra $520,000 in revenue since 2007... Lean provides a lens through which companies can study different processes across various departments with the goal of reducing costs and improving quality... Burnette calculates that lean has saved Denver Health, which has a $750 million budget, a total of $28.6 million..."
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Lean Thinking and Management by John Hunter, Mar 2006
"The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart... My belief is that an organization must slowly and consistently move in the right direction. Toyota got to where it is today after many decades of continuous improvement."
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Maximizing Profits Through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints by Bob Sproull, May 2009
"Lean and Six Sigma are vital to the success of all process improvement initiatives. What is missing is the necessary focus and leverage needed to maximize your return on your process improvement investment. By focusing the Lean and Six Sigma principles, tools and techniques on the operation that is limiting throughput, your profits will soar."
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Taiichi Ohno Reinterpreted by Keith Swenson, Oct 2009
"if you understand the mapping to software development, you find that he sets out an equally clear description for Lean/Agile software development. If Ohno was alive today, I am convinced he would have been an eloquent proponent for developing software in short iterations, with continuous builds, continuous testing, immediate response to build breakage, and guided by feature burn-down. In other words, a proponent of Agile Software Development."
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Many more good lean thinking, lean manufacturing aricles.