This book presents a big-picture overview of the entire Shingo improvement process. It fully discusses the needs and benefits of the Shingo process, and what is required if you seek to execute the Shingo Model in your enterprise and focuses on creating an enduring organization-wide continuous improvement process. It gives the reader a discussion of the entire Shingo experience while the most existing books on the model are course specific. There are numerous discussions, conference talks, and webinars of why the Shingo process is beneficial, and what types of improvements can be achieved, but the crucial material has not been assembled in one concise book, giving the executive, manger, or supervisor an overview and understanding of what the Shingo experience entails. The main purpose of this book. It is for the executives who want to understand their role in supporting and leading middle management with its implementation. Many executives from developing countries all over the world are seeking a concise definition of what the Shingo model is, and this book functions as the perfect primer. Even those who have attended and implemented the lessons from the Shingo Institute's courses would find this book a benefit as it serves perfectly as backup and reference material. In addition, this book helps anyone who has started their journey with the Shingo model and may be confused about what to do and expect -- It gives them a vision of what the continuing journey will look like. The Shingo process is being taught at numerous universities and this book could indeed serve as the appropriate textbook or supplemental reading. Essentially, this book teaches an innovative and extremely successful approach to continuous improvement, referred to as the Shingo process. It is based on a set of universally accepted principles that are endorsed by improvement leaders such as Covey and companies such as Toyota. This book is not a detailed review or a replacement of the Shingo workshops. It is an overview of the entire Shingo process, starting with a discussion of the challenges that many of todays enterprises are experiencing. The author, in his role as a PhD in economics, has studied industries and has worked closely with many of them attempting to understand their weaknesses. Next, this book builds upon an understanding of these weaknesses. The book discusses how the over-all Shingo methodology fits into these organizations and highlights the benefits. The next step is then to discuss what requirements are necessary for an organization to get ready for a Shingo transformation. What are the steps that the organization needs to go through, and when will it know that it is ready to begin? The book briefly reviews the Shingo Insights and Principles and explains how the Shingo courses should be best utilized to facilitate the desired transformation. It suggests some alternative plans for over-all implementation based on the current state of the enterprise. It explains why there is no "one way" for successful implementation and how the implementation sequence needs to be customized. It also discusses the length of time needed for success and how this differs depending on the current enterprise environment. Lastly the book explains how the implementation and Shingo training is never finished. It is an on-going process and success is defined by internal improvements, not by some arbitrary external benchmark. The book is intended to be educational, thought provoking, entertaining in its stories and examples, and a guideline towards the development of a plan for continuous improvement. This book is filled with stories and examples, showing successful and not so successful implementations. The stories are used to highlight many of the pitfalls that have arisen and may arise for you and which can be avoided if the reader is aware of them and knows how to watch for them.

Why Study Supervision? This book presents two compelling reasons to study supervision and supervisory leadership: Influential Position: Supervisors exert considerable influence on organizational settings. Supervisors have been schooled, developed, and trained for their responsibilities. They can function more effectively than if they learn through informal, sometimes haphazard means. It thus pays to learn about supervision because supervisors can influence how efficiently and effectively their organization functions. Career Path: Many career paths lead to supervision. Supervisors are everywhere. Supervisors are teachers, doctors, accountants, lawyers, plumbers, and electricians. If you aspire to advance within your occupation, you may find that one career path leads to supervision. Preparing for supervisory responsibilities can prepare you for advancement. You may thus have a personal stake – your own future – in learning about what supervisors do and how they do it. In addition, this book: Provides strategies for building solid relationships with team members. Uses positivity as a foundational practice to lead and encourage other employees. Provides guidelines on how to hold employees accountable and set high expectations. Presents strategies to engage, coach, and develop employees by creating a positive environment to influence attitudes and behaviors. Offers various approaches for managing time and increasing productivity.

Speaks directly and exclusively to an unserved group of new engineers joining their first professional technical or engineering organization Provides a basic foundation to understanding the engineering organization and covering the first critical steps to learning how to operate within it Shares the key academic framework supporting the basic foundation as a prerequisite to truly understanding the organization’s dynamics Through numerous case studies the book presents actual experiential guidance in dealing with engineering organizations from the new hire’s point of view Offers a method on how to extend these insights listed in the book and turn them into a valuable personal model, valid throughout the engineer’s career

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) came to existence as an approach for solving complex learning, planning, and decision-making problems. When we talk about decision making, there may be some meta-heuristic methods where the problem solving may resemble like operation research. But exactly, it is not related completely to management research. The text examines representing and using organizational knowledge in DAI systems, dynamics of computational ecosystems, and communication-free interactions among rational agents. This publication takes a look at conflict-resolution strategies for nonhierarchical distributed agents, constraint-directed negotiation of resource allocations, and plans for multiple agents. Topics included plan verification, generation, and execution, negotiation operators, representation, network management problem, and conflict-resolution paradigms. The manuscript elaborates on negotiating task decomposition and allocation using partial global planning and mechanisms for assessing nonlocal impact of local decisions in distributed planning. The book will attract researchers and practitioners who are working in management and computer science, and industry persons in need of a beginner to advanced understanding of the basic and advanced concepts.

The manufacturing industries remain the foundation of local, regional, and global economies. Manufacturing plants operate in dynamic markets that demand upgrading with transformational technologies for maintaining profitability, competitiveness, and business sustainability. Yet most manufacturing plants currently use technologies that are no longer competitive and industry leaders face an overwhelming array of operational challenges that require agile and enhanced transformational solutions. This book offers manufacturers effective strategies and tools for the adoption and implementation of advanced operational technologies to ensure long-term innovation, efficiency, and profitability. The book covers advanced automation integration in manufacturing, including digitization, AI, machine learning, IIoT, and cybersecurity. It describes innovation, development, and integration of control technologies for sustainable manufacturing. It explains how to upgrade existing manufacturing plants for the global market. It shows how to apply emerging technologies including asset optimization and process integration for product lifecycle improvements, plant operation and maintenance enhancement, and supply chain integration. This book serves as a strategic guide to applying advanced operational technologies for engineers, industry professionals, and management in the manufacturing sector.

Having a team that knows how to adapt and innovate quickly can make all the difference in these challenging and competitive times -- for your organization and you personally as a leader. Leaders as coaches are crucial for a true learning organization, and high-performance teams need and want their leader to coach -- not tell. But not just any kind of coaching! Coaching that is enabling and inspiring because it increases adaptiveness and creativity -- with each individual and the whole team -- so they achieve important goals together. That's what the Coaching Kata helps leaders to learn. Take a fresh look at this five-phase, dual-purpose coaching model, become the leader you always wanted to be, and your team needs you to be. This business novel will transform the way you see and lead your team.

Speaks directly and exclusively to an unserved group of new engineers joining their first professional technical or engineering organization Provides a basic foundation to understanding the engineering organization and covering the first critical steps to learning how to operate within it Shares the key academic framework supporting the basic foundation as a prerequisite to truly understanding the organization’s dynamics Through numerous case studies the book presents actual experiential guidance in dealing with engineering organizations from the new hire’s point of view Offers a method on how to extend these insights listed in the book and turn them into a valuable personal model, valid throughout the engineer’s career

This book outlines the process of sustainable product design and development. It presents design guidelines that help prolong the life of a product and minimize its environmental impact. These guidelines specifically enable product design for end-of-life (EoL) objectives such as reuse, recycling and remanufacturing. Sustainable Product Design and Development also presents mathematical models that will help the designer determine the cost of designing sustainable products. This cost can be computed early during the design stage of a product. Sustainable Product Design and Development presents different ways and means by which a product can address all three pillars of sustainability-environmental conservation, social sustainability, and economic sustainability. Various case studies are incorporated in different chapters. Case studies on designing products for assembly, disassembly and remanufacturing have been presented in their respective chapters. The book also provides an overview of global environmental legislation to help the reader grasp the importance of waste management and sustainable product design. This book is aimed at professionals, engineering students, environmental scientists, and those in the business environment.

Microforming Technology: Theory, Simulation and Practice addresses all aspects of micromanufacturing technology, presenting detailed technical information and the latest research developments. The book covers fundamentals, theory, simulation models, equipment and tools design, practical micromanufacturing procedures, and micromanufacturing-related supporting systems, such as laser heating system, hydraulic system and quality evaluation systems. Newly developed technology, including micro wedge rolling, micro flexible rolling and micro hydromechanical deep drawing, as well as traditional methods, such as micro deep drawing, micro bending and micro ultrathin strip rolling, are discussed. This will be a highly valuable resource for those involved in the use, study and design of micro products and micromanufacturing technologies, including engineers, scientists, academics and graduate students.

Problems facing manufacturing clusters that intersect information technology, process management, and optimization within the Internet of Things (IoT) are examined in this book. Recent advances in information technology have transformed the use of resources and data exchange, often leading to management and optimization problems attributatble to technology limitations and strong market competition. This book discusses several problems and concepts which makes significant connections in the areas of information sharing, organization management, resource operations, and performance assessment. Geared toward practitioners and researchers, this treatment deepens the understanding between resource collaborative management and advanced information technology. Those in manufacturing will utilize the numerous mathematical models and methods offered to solve practical problems related to cutting stock, supply chain scheduling, and inventory management. Academics and students with a basic knowledge of manufacturing, combinatorics, and linear programming will find that this discussion widens the research area of resource collaborative management and unites the fields of information technology, manufacturing management, and optimization.

Currently, change is the new normal. As change grows, so does risk. But how will leaders understand the risk if they don't measure it? In short, they won't. The reality is that ignorance is never bliss. What leaders and their organizations don't know will eventually impact them and their customers. Thus, situational awareness, forethought, and preparation are now key competencies for leaders to survive in high-risk environments. In this book, readers will learn the basics of leadership time management, the disruptability quotient, the leadership "canary" and why it's just as important to leaders as it was to coal miners, and the slippery slope of change management (do we improve, change, or model the current state?), signals of leadership maturity and false positives, mastering the art of organizational knowledge, the pearls, and pitfalls of leadership rebranding, and the risk of non-utilized talent. Why aren't current leaders required to undergo "storm proofing" from an operational perspective? As many of us experienced in various academic programs, the main foci are technical skills in management, organizational theory, data analysis, and many of the traditional leadership training courses. But, what happens when a leadership storm appears such as an unprecedented pandemic or supply chain crisis, or talent gaps where workers are not available to complete the basic services humanity relies on daily? Most leaders were not and are not prepared for today's storms. The result is reactive leadership, higher-than-expected risk propositions, and disruptive transformations that force leaders from their perches to find the next best role their skillsets will buy. This book is for leaders and professionals who are currently, or will be leading teams, divisions, and organizations. Its purpose is to provide practical guidance on how leaders can "stormproof" their portfolios. Thus, they will be able to survive, thrive in, and outlast high-risk leadership storms that will overwhelm their less-prepared peers.

Currently, change is the new normal. As change grows, so does risk. But how will leaders understand the risk if they don't measure it? In short, they won't. The reality is that ignorance is never bliss. What leaders and their organizations don't know will eventually impact them and their customers. Thus, situational awareness, forethought, and preparation are now key competencies for leaders to survive in high-risk environments. In this book, readers will learn the basics of leadership time management, the disruptability quotient, the leadership "canary" and why it's just as important to leaders as it was to coal miners, and the slippery slope of change management (do we improve, change, or model the current state?), signals of leadership maturity and false positives, mastering the art of organizational knowledge, the pearls, and pitfalls of leadership rebranding, and the risk of non-utilized talent. Why aren't current leaders required to undergo "storm proofing" from an operational perspective? As many of us experienced in various academic programs, the main foci are technical skills in management, organizational theory, data analysis, and many of the traditional leadership training courses. But, what happens when a leadership storm appears such as an unprecedented pandemic or supply chain crisis, or talent gaps where workers are not available to complete the basic services humanity relies on daily? Most leaders were not and are not prepared for today's storms. The result is reactive leadership, higher-than-expected risk propositions, and disruptive transformations that force leaders from their perches to find the next best role their skillsets will buy. This book is for leaders and professionals who are currently, or will be leading teams, divisions, and organizations. Its purpose is to provide practical guidance on how leaders can "stormproof" their portfolios. Thus, they will be able to survive, thrive in, and outlast high-risk leadership storms that will overwhelm their less-prepared peers.

Advances in Carpet Manufacture, Second Edition, discusses the manufacture of carpets, an industry that has evolved over hundreds of years, also exploring the new changes and developments in textile science and manufacturing technology that occur every day. This updated edition provides revised, expanded and updated coverage of carpet manufacturing processes and applications. The book begins by reviewing the different types of carpets and their applications, also exploring the structure and properties of carpet materials. Carpet manufacturing techniques are then reviewed, including a new chapter on tufting and yarn manufacturing techniques, and design and manufacture for handmade carpets. Subsequent chapters review the development of carpets with important properties, including new chapters on carpets for acoustics and sound absorption, carpets with increased fire retardancy and those with antimicrobial and soil-resist finishes. With the variety of topics covered and its international team of contributors, the book offers a valuable and informative reference for technologists in the carpet and associated industries. However, it is also a great resource for researchers and students working in applied textile sciences.

Increased industrial capacity, manufacturing output, and manufacturing technology all contribute significantly to a country's GDP. Manufacturing is the foundation of industrial production, so improving its methods and infrastructure is crucial for progress. Recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of energy- and resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, and occupationally safe manufacturing techniques, and this book focuses on these latest techniques, as well as continuous advancement, in order to meet current challenges. The book is divided into three sections: (1) subtractive manufacturing, (2) additive manufacturing, and (3) the use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing. It discusses micromaching, metal-based additive manufacturing, polymer-based additive manufacturing, hybrid additive manufacturing, and finally artificial intelligence in manufacturing. Futuristic Manufacturing: Perpetual Advancement and Research Challenges connects modern manufacturing methods and emerging trends in the industry. It adds a thorough examination of modern manufacturing techniques and modifications that may be implemented in the future, and is an excellent resource of information for undergraduate and graduate students in manufacturing.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the concept of Transformational Coaching and to educate professional business coaches or mangers-as-coaches in their organizations on the influential and relevant elements of Transformational Coaching for Effective Leadership designed for coaching individuals, teams, businesses or applying such elements in any levels of Organization Development intervention, either toward individuals, teams, groups, departments, or the organization itself. Given the power and long-lasting influence of transformational coaching, it also could be beneficial to professionals in fields of Human Resources Development (HRD), Workplace Learning and Performance (WLP), Human Performance Enhancement (HPE) and overall, in the domain of Workforce Education and Development (WFED). This book will start by reviewing the background and presence of Transformational Coaching in businesses and organizations, along with the general concepts, perceptions, and understanding of coaching. This book will examine the uses of Transformational Coaching in management and leadership development, human resources development for talent development and retention, and for developing managerial coaching skills and competencies. Additionally, this book will review the presence and use of Transformational Coaching concepts, theories, and practices, including transformational learning for HR and HRD professionals to influence the workforce's attitude, behavior, and productivity. This book: * Builds individuals' self-awareness, self-realization, and self-confidence. * Offers personal and professional development. * Teaches the concept of transformational learning and its use in transformational coaching. * Teaches rituals, skills, and strategies for individuals and teams to increase their productivity. * Offers an approach to building healthy and strong relationships with oneself and others. * Includes change management strategies for redirecting poor job performance. * Helps readers implement effective transformational coaching practices by offering many tools such as forms, checklists, and worksheets.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the concept of Transformational Coaching and to educate professional business coaches or mangers-as-coaches in their organizations on the influential and relevant elements of Transformational Coaching for Effective Leadership designed for coaching individuals, teams, businesses or applying such elements in any levels of Organization Development intervention, either toward individuals, teams, groups, departments, or the organization itself. Given the power and long-lasting influence of transformational coaching, it also could be beneficial to professionals in fields of Human Resources Development (HRD), Workplace Learning and Performance (WLP), Human Performance Enhancement (HPE) and overall, in the domain of Workforce Education and Development (WFED). This book will start by reviewing the background and presence of Transformational Coaching in businesses and organizations, along with the general concepts, perceptions, and understanding of coaching. This book will examine the uses of Transformational Coaching in management and leadership development, human resources development for talent development and retention, and for developing managerial coaching skills and competencies. Additionally, this book will review the presence and use of Transformational Coaching concepts, theories, and practices, including transformational learning for HR and HRD professionals to influence the workforce's attitude, behavior, and productivity. This book: * Builds individuals' self-awareness, self-realization, and self-confidence. * Offers personal and professional development. * Teaches the concept of transformational learning and its use in transformational coaching. * Teaches rituals, skills, and strategies for individuals and teams to increase their productivity. * Offers an approach to building healthy and strong relationships with oneself and others. * Includes change management strategies for redirecting poor job performance. * Helps readers implement effective transformational coaching practices by offering many tools such as forms, checklists, and worksheets.

Innovation is added value to a known process. Bioprinting: Techniques and Risks for Regenerative Medicine aims to stimulate a scientifically grounded, interdisciplinary, multiscale debate and exchange of ideas using the techniques described in the book. 3D printing and additive manufacturing evolved from within the field of Cell Biology will have the ability to recreate cells queried from large amounts of phenotypic and molecular data. Stem Cell biologists, biotechnologists and material engineers, as well as graduate students will greatly benefit from the practical knowledge and case examples provided throughout this book.

Product design is becoming increasingly challenging as product complexity increases dramatically with the advent of autonomous control and the need to achieve zero emissions. Companies continue to have poor product launches with significant numbers of recall campaigns and high after-sales warranties. It is important that potential product failures are identified and fixed during the design of a product. Failure modes found late after the design has matured are normally easy to find with some being identified by the customer but are often difficult and expensive to fix since modifying one part will often have a knock-on effect on other parts causing other problems. Discovering failure modes early in the design process is often difficult requiring rigorous and comprehensive analysis but once found such failure modes are usually easy and cheap to fix. This book presents an approach to product design based on Failure Mode Avoidance that utilizes a series of strongly interrelated engineering tools and interpersonal skills that can be used to discover failure modes early in the design process. The tools can be used across engineering disciplines. Despite engineering being largely a team activity, it is often the case that little attention is paid to the team process after the team membership has been identified, with membership normally being based on technical expertise. In addition to technical expertise, an effective engineering team requires individual engineers to work together efficiently. Good leadership is also required with the leader able to both manage change and encourage individual team members to work to the best of their ability. The book interweaves technical skills, team skills, and team leadership in a way that reflects their real-life interrelationship. The book tells the fictional story of a small engineering team and its leader as they implement the skills introduced in the book and follows their experiences reflecting individual difficulties, enthusiasm, humor, and skepticism in applying the methodologies and tools for the first time. In addition, the story tells of team members' interactions with their management and peers within a company that, having been very successful, finds itself in financial difficulties. It promotes constructivist learning through the reader empathizing with the characters in the book. These characters ask questions that are typical of those that learners will ask about the subject matter. Learning reinforcement is also integrated into the storyline as a natural and unobtrusive feature. The book is intended to be read like a novel from cover to cover with a storyline that motivates the reader to read on. While including in-depth technical examples the book is not intended as a seminal text on Failure Mode Avoidance or team skills but is intended to give the reader an understanding such that they are motivated to learn more. Having read the book, it can be treated more typically as a textbook by returning to some of the technical detail or looking to further reading such as that identified in the book.

Product design is becoming increasingly challenging as product complexity increases dramatically with the advent of autonomous control and the need to achieve zero emissions. Companies continue to have poor product launches with significant numbers of recall campaigns and high after-sales warranties. It is important that potential product failures are identified and fixed during the design of a product. Failure modes found late after the design has matured are normally easy to find with some being identified by the customer but are often difficult and expensive to fix since modifying one part will often have a knock-on effect on other parts causing other problems. Discovering failure modes early in the design process is often difficult requiring rigorous and comprehensive analysis but once found such failure modes are usually easy and cheap to fix. This book presents an approach to product design based on Failure Mode Avoidance that utilizes a series of strongly interrelated engineering tools and interpersonal skills that can be used to discover failure modes early in the design process. The tools can be used across engineering disciplines. Despite engineering being largely a team activity, it is often the case that little attention is paid to the team process after the team membership has been identified, with membership normally being based on technical expertise. In addition to technical expertise, an effective engineering team requires individual engineers to work together efficiently. Good leadership is also required with the leader able to both manage change and encourage individual team members to work to the best of their ability. The book interweaves technical skills, team skills, and team leadership in a way that reflects their real-life interrelationship. The book tells the fictional story of a small engineering team and its leader as they implement the skills introduced in the book and follows their experiences reflecting individual difficulties, enthusiasm, humor, and skepticism in applying the methodologies and tools for the first time. In addition, the story tells of team members' interactions with their management and peers within a company that, having been very successful, finds itself in financial difficulties. It promotes constructivist learning through the reader empathizing with the characters in the book. These characters ask questions that are typical of those that learners will ask about the subject matter. Learning reinforcement is also integrated into the storyline as a natural and unobtrusive feature. The book is intended to be read like a novel from cover to cover with a storyline that motivates the reader to read on. While including in-depth technical examples the book is not intended as a seminal text on Failure Mode Avoidance or team skills but is intended to give the reader an understanding such that they are motivated to learn more. Having read the book, it can be treated more typically as a textbook by returning to some of the technical detail or looking to further reading such as that identified in the book.

Materials and manufacturing techniques are a few of the vital processes in production industries. Most of the materials processing and manufacturing techniques currently used in industries are a major cause of environmental pollution and are hence unsustainable. This book provides in-depth knowledge about challenges faced during the processing of advanced materials and discusses possible ways to achieve sustainability in manufacturing. This book: Covers advances in cryogenic machining, optimization, and economical and energy assessment of machining; Provides case studies and numerical design with analysis using computational fluid dynamics of minimum quantity lubrication mist droplets; Reviews metalworking fluids, laser micro-texturing, materials and manufacturing in sustainability, biofuels additives, nano-materials, and additive manufacturing of waste plastic; Explores the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning-based manufacturing techniques; and Covers the latest challenges and future trends in sustainable manufacturing. Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing Technologies is primarily written for senior undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in mechanical, manufacturing, industrial, and production engineering, and material science.

Applied Systems Analysis: Science and Art of Solving Real-Life Problems Subject Guide: Engineering - Industrial and Manufacturing Any activity is aimed at solving certain problems, which means transferring a system from an existing unsatisfactory problematic state to a desired state. The success or failure of the system depends on how its natural properties were implemented during the planning of improvement and intervention state. This book covers the theory and experience of successfully solving problems in a practical and general way. This book includes a general survey of modern systems analysis; offers several original results; presents the latest methodological and technological results of the theory of systems; introduces achievements; and discusses the transition from the ideology of the machine age to the ideology of the systems age. This book will be of interest to both professionals and academicians.

The demand and supply chain planning process for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers has evolved over the years. It has gone from a disjointed, unconnected, slow, inaccurate, fairly manual set of processes to an integrated, timely process enabled by the use and coordination of highly trained people, lean, agile processes, and cutting-edge technology. To make this set of processes work effectively, one has to fully understand and appreciate that there is an "art and science" aspect to the process which can take years of education and experience to fully understand. Essentially, this book will offer the reader a chance to fully understand the interconnected set of processes in a "best-practice" application. Furthermore, examples and cases will be used to illustrate its practical application in today's complex global supply chain. In addition, readers will understand and be able to apply and articulate the concepts, tools, and techniques used in the efficient supply of goods and services in today's changing global economy. It will help them to learn how businesses, through their supply chain, work both internally and with their trading partners - both upstream and downstream - to build strong relationships and integrate demand and supply planning activities across the supply chain to deliver customer value efficiently and effectively. They will learn about the tools and technologies enabling integration, and the critical drivers and key metrics of supply chain performance.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book presents results relevant in the manufacturing research field, that are mainly aimed at closing the gap between the academic investigation and the industrial application, in collaboration with manufacturing companies. Several hardware and software prototypes represent the key outcome of the scientific contributions that can be grouped into five main areas, representing different perspectives of the factory domain:1) Evolutionary and reconfigurable factories to cope with dynamic production contexts characterized by evolving demand and technologies, products and processes.2) Factories for sustainable production, asking for energy efficiency, low environmental impact products and processes, new de-production logics, sustainable logistics.3) Factories for the People who need new kinds of interactions between production processes, machines, and human beings to offer a more comfortable and stimulating working environment.4) Factories for customized products that will be more and more tailored to the final user's needs and sold at cost-effective prices.5) High performance factories to yield the due production while minimizing the inefficiencies caused by failures, management problems, maintenance.This books is primarily targeted to academic researchers and industrial practitioners in the manufacturing domain.

Currently, the challenge for manufacturing organizations is how to achieve their expected profit by continuously improving productivity or reducing costs. Manufacturing organizations have been using different improvement approaches to achieving cost reduction and productivity improvement for years by eliminating various losses and waste structures, such as excess inventory, excessive workforce, excessive capacity, excessive utility consumption, and so on. But is the problem solved? Unfortunately, no! Often manufacturing companies focus on maximizing the flow and meeting customer needs but forget their real aim - to make a profit for their stakeholders. Too many organizations meet customer expectations by seeking to continuously synchronize the flow to market demand but forget to check that they are doing it profitably enough to ensure business continuity and prosperity. When the financial results show that they are not so profitable, it is already too late. Moreover, the strategic direction of systematic improvements according to the sales trend - depending on the current degree of production capacity utilization and its dynamic effects on cost structures - is deficient in many manufacturing companies. So, would the failure of strategic and profitable systematic improvements be an option? Of course not! If the ultimate goal of the organization is to create target profit for stakeholders, then the behavior and strategic systematic improvements must be directed to those scenarios, strategies, tasks, problems, and "production levers" that are best based on creating the target profit. That's what Strategic Kaizen thinking does - the simultaneous and consistent achievement of systematic operational and financial improvements in a strategic and operational manner. It achieves both synchronous operations at market demand by fulfilling takt time and profitable operations in accordance with profit demand by fulfilling takt profit. In short, the Strategic Kaizen mission is striving for the fulfillment of the ideal state of operations called synchronous profitable operations. In this book, the author, while presenting in detail the seven processes of Strategic Kaizen methodology, exposes the answer to historically incomplete thinking of productivity improvements for target profitability. The uniqueness of the book is reinforced by the detailed presentation of the successful application of the Strategic Kaizen thinking over the years in two multinational manufacturing organizations operating in highly competitive markets, addressing the synchronous profitable operations for both the sales increase scenario and the sales decrease scenario. Moreover, it presents examples of the practical application of the "white-collar" Strategic Kaizen. Essentially, by adopting the Strategic Kaizen methodology presented in detail in this book to consistently achieve the ideal state of a manufacturing organization, organizations will enter a new paradigm of thinking of strategic improvements - Strategic Kaizen thinking - to meet annual and multiannual target profits in a unique and effective way that operates according to its own strategic and operational management system.

Survival and thriving in today's business environment require companies to continuously strive for operational excellence at all levels of the organization. Simply working to maintain existing operations is not an adequate or sustainable business strategy, especially when competing in a global market. To remain relevant, companies must adopt a process control and continuous improvement mentality as an integral part of their daily work activities. These two operational disciplines form the foundation and stepping stones for manufacturing excellence. Processes must be stable, capable, and controlled as a prerequisite for sustainable improvement. Sustainable improvements must be strategic, continuous, and focused on process optimization. Modern-day manufacturing is rapidly changing in the face of technological, geopolitical, social, and environmental developments. These challenges are altering the way we think and act to transform raw materials into finished goods. Meeting these challenges requires particular attention to how we develop and engage people and apply technology for long-term sustainability and competitive advantage. This book takes you on a journey to explore the fundamental elements, management practices, improvement methods, and future direction of shop floor management. Part 1 of this five-part manuscript considers workplace culture, organizational structure, operational discipline, and employee accountability as the foundation for a robust manufacturing system. Part 2 studies the impact of process standardization, data analytics, information sharing, communication, and people on daily shop floor management. Once the management system has been adequately described, Part 3 concentrates on its effective execution, monitoring, and control with a deep look into the people, methods, machines, materials, and environment that make it possible. Like every good manufacturing text, efficiency and productivity are key topics. That's why Part 4 explores various methods, tools, and techniques associated with product and process development, productivity improvement, agile methods, shop floor optimization, and manufacturing excellence. The final section, Part 5, shifts focus to emerging technologies, engaging the reader to contemplate technology's impact on the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry.