Packed with international case examples and clearly delineating principles as they apply to public sector organizations, Lean for the Public Sector: The Pursuit of Perfection in Government Services demonstrates that Lean in the public sector is neither rocket science nor a typical profit-driven improvement program. The book begins with coverage of the basic philosophy of Lean before detailing specific methods for improving processes in the public sector. It addresses concerns specific to the public sector environment and considers the role of the citizen, not only as customer, but as a voter, taxpayer, and community participant. The author provides a clear explanation of methods such as 5S, kaizen, standardization techniques, and Value Stream Mapping shaped to Lean Government. His approach provides a reality-based view of value-added services and waste in the public sector. Written specifically to address the application of Lean practices in government and the public sector, this how-to workbook gives you the wherewithal to combat the 'We don't make widgets' mentality. Providing the tools to manage the entire Lean transformation process, the book helps you immediately integrate the Lean way of thinking and its tools into your improvement program.

This book provides the much-needed, no-nonsense guidance crucial for project managers - that is, the type of guidance that is missing from every major body of knowledge and educational offering for working project managers. This very practical book identifies the activities that influence project success and focuses the limited time and energy available towards just those activities. The Project Management Institute (PMI) and most literature on project management discusses all aspects of project management under the assumption that project managers will narrow down focus because they cannot be expected to use every process outlined by PMI to manage every project. This book uses the concept of "hacking" our standard conventions of project management and outlines a standard path identified by conventional wisdom, an evil path that project managers frequently resort to under time/quality pressures, and a hacker path that provides a better way to look at the challenge. This book equips project managers with streamlined approaches to refocus their efforts on factors that matter while spending less time doing it. Project management is a demanding discipline with a growing body of knowledge with few instructions on how to do it all. The author provides humorous anecdotes and examples while teaching readers how to save time, improve quality, and advance their career. The primary sections of the book cover how to approach the most common certifications in project management; continuing education; leading project teams; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling projects; general life skills; and taking on additional responsibilities. Hacking project management is about focusing the limited bandwidth a project manager can give a project towards the activities that drive success.

Unlike other books that promote a specific process and performance improvement discipline, this book shows organizations how to achieve success by fixing basic operational issues and problems using a broad and wide-sweeping process-based toolkit. In addition, it helps individuals who have worked in stale- or siloed-thinking enterprises make the transition to a process or improvement-oriented culture and teaches those who are unfamiliar with process tools to look at their work with a new lens and adopt a continuous improvement and analytical-thinking mindset. The authors have successfully used the various methods, tools, and concepts found in this book to overcome practical, daily problems at various organizations. This book will surely help operators, managers, practitioners, and executives, who are charged with improving processes and workplace culture, produce better products and services.

This comprehensive book presents a methodology for continuous process improvement in a structured, logical, and easily understandable framework based on industry accepted tools, techniques, and practices. It begins by explaining the conditions necessary for establishing a stable and capable process and the actions required to maintain process control, while setting the stage for sustainable efficiency improvements driven by waste elimination and process flow enhancement. This structured approach makes a clear connection between the need for a quality process to serve as the foundation for incremental efficiency improvements. This book moves beyond talking about the value contribution of tools and techniques for process control and continuous improvement by focusing on the daily work routines necessary to maintain and sustain these activities as part of a lean process and management mindset. Part 1 discusses process quality improvement with an understanding of variation and its impact on process performance. It continues by stressing the importance of standardizing a process to achieve process stability. Once process stability is reflected in a consistent and predictable output, attention is turned to ensuring the process is capable of consistently meeting customer requirements. This series of activities sets the foundation for process control and the sustainable pursuit of efficiency improvements. Part 2 focuses on efficiency improvement by eliminating waste while improving process flow using proven tools and methods. Although there is a clear relationship between waste elimination and process flow, these activities are discussed separately to allow those more interested in waste elimination to work independently from those looking to optimize value stream flow. Part 3 explores the principles, practices, systems, and behaviors required to maintain process control while creating a mindset of continuous incremental improvement. It considers the role organizational structure, discipline, and accountability play as essential components for long term operational success. This book will: Provide readers with a clear roadmap for establishing, achieving, and maintaining process control as the foundation upon which to pursue efficiency improvements. Establish direction and methods for continuous and sustainable process improvement Define the practices, systems, and behaviors required to realize desired results and develop a culture of process control and continuous improvement along the road to operational excellence.

At last, this much anticipated book has been published and provides a much needed breath of fresh air. The Strategos Guide to Value Stream and Process Mapping has helpful tips on facilitating group VSM exercises and helps put VSM in the greater Lean context. With photos and examples of related Lean practices, the book focuses on implementing VSM, not just on drawing diagrams and graphs. This is the most comprehensive and practical book on the subject to date.

The Product Wheel (PW) design process has practical methods for finding the optimum sequence, minimizing changeover costs, and freeing up useful capacity. So much so, that the DuPont Company and Exxon Mobil are just a few companies that have used the product wheel concept to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.Breaking down a fairly complex design process into manageable steps, The Product Wheel Handbook: Creating Balanced Flow in High-Mix Process Operations walks readers through the process for designing and implementing the PW technique. It includes a case study taken from actual practice that illustrates the design process and its benefits. Describing how to apply the product wheel technique to any manufacturing operation, the book: Details the steps required to implement product wheels Explains why certain traditional manufacturing metrics should be reevaluated so they don't inhibit product wheel performance Defines the cultural foundation necessary for smooth product wheel design and implementation Includes a real-world case study and several examples of product wheels being used by successful manufacturing companies including BG Products, Inc., the DuPont Company, the Dow Chemical Company, and Appleton Many of the steps in wheel design described in this book are not new. What's new is their application to production planning and scheduling problems, and more importantly, a clear roadmap explaining how and when they should be used in product wheel design.Supplying you with the tools to reduce the chaos often found in production scheduling, the book outlines a disciplined structure that will allow you to spend less of your time resolving schedule problems. Most importantly, it provides your organization with a stable platform to deal with abnormal events in a less stressful and more logical manner.

Encouraging efficiency, clarity, and disciplined thinking, A3 Problem Solving identifies a problem, describes the objective, and summarizes fact finding and action steps, all on a single A3-sized piece of paper. This approach provides all employees at all levels with a method to quickly identify a problem, analyze it to root cause, select appropriate countermeasures, and communicate necessary actions to decision makers. The A3 Workbook: Unlock Your Problem-Solving Mind is designed to teach A3 Problem Solving to workers at every level of an organization. Uniquely qualified to author this workbook, Daniel Matthews is an expert trainer with 30 years of training experience including Lean implementation and Training within Industry (TWI). Fourteen of those years he spent with the Toyota Company, which created and made use of the A3 as a core component of continuous quality improvement. This workbook provides a practical tool for solving specific problems or for making a specific proposal, while also encouraging the development of a corporate culture that empowers all employees to support continuous improvement. The workbook follows the progression of a basic A3 Problem Solving format, offering instructions every step of the way. To reinforce learning, it includes Case studies that readers can use to complete A3s Tips on how to improve the readability of A3s Examples of Problem Solving A3s, and a Proposal A3 Exercises to reinforce what's learned Worksheet templates that can be reproduced for future problem solving An effective problem-solving process is a critical part of implementing efficient business practices and a problem-solving culture is a fundamental component of empowering employees to support business improvements. Both of these components, taken together, can help any organization make continuous improvements on the long journey to creat

Bring Lean Improvements to the Administrative Areas of Your Organization! Extending their eight-step process to the realization of a lean office, Tapping and Shuker use a customer service case studyto illustrate the effectiveness of the value stream storyboard.This popular volume provides organizations with a proven system for implementing lean principles in the office. In addition to providing a thorough overview of basic lean concepts, this book details methods for identifying the administrative activities in need of attention. To address these, it applies the eight-step process for removing waste and reorganizing workflow. Accompanying the book are downloadable resources containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, charts, a team charter, and worksheets. Along with this book you receive downloadable resources containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, useful charts, a team charter, forms, reports, and worksheets!

These 20 essential keys have helped many manufacturing companies integrate the top manufacturing improvement methods into a coordinated system for drastic and continual improvement in involvement, quality, and productivity. This program provides the strategies necessary to achieve ambitious goals through a five-level scoring system. The revised edition is improved with upgraded criteria for the system to guide your company to world-class status. New material and updated layout make implementation even easier. Two valuable case studies demonstrate effective use by both a Japanese company and an American manufacturer.

A hands-on guide to adapting Lean principles and the Toyota Production System to high-mix/low-volume environments, Lean Production for the Small Company uses charts, pictures, and easy-to-understand language to describe the methods needed to improve processes and eliminate waste. It walks readers through the correct order of implementation and describes problems and pitfalls along with time-tested solutions. Explaining how to incorporate existing systems into a Lean strategy, the book starts with the fundamentals and builds on them to describe the full range of tools and processes needed to implement Lean. It outlines how to design factories for Lean manufacturing and demonstrates how to remove variations within business and manufacturing processes to achieve a smooth continuous flow of product that delivers your product on time to customers. The tools, methods, and ideals discussed are applicable in any industry and all parts of your business from manufacturing and sales to human resources. The text unveils new methods and tools that can help you reduce inventory, improve inventory turns, and facilitate raw material flow through the factory. It details how to use customer order demands to schedule the production floor, rather than using estimated production schedules. It also considers the accounting process and explains how to improve your cash-to-cash cycle time. Drawing on the author's decades of experience transforming high-mix plants to Lean, the text brings together coverage of the tools and processes that have made Toyota so successful. All the chapters in this book, when implemented, will result in a culture change that will transform your company into a learning organization that continuously eliminates waste and improves its processes.

Winner of a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award! At the heart of Lean and Six Sigma is the same, unique business operating system: hoshin kanri. It is a method of strategic planning and a tool for managing complex projects, a quality operating system geared to ensuring that organizations faithfully translate the voice of the customer into new products, and a business operating system that ensures reliable profit growth. The true power of hoshin kanri, however, is two-fold -- it is a superior organizational learning method as well as a competitive resource development system. Hoshin Kanri for the Lean Enterprise, by Tom Jackson, explains how you can implement, identify and manage the critical relationships among your markets, design characteristics, production systems, and personnel to satisfy your customers and beat your competition. This practical workbook provides- A new understanding of hoshin kanri as a grand experimental design implemented through a system of team agreements. Clear explanations of the steps of hoshin kanri. A measure of overall business effectiveness used to determine the focus of corporate strategy. A new, improved X-matrix that incorporates a lean "balanced scorecard" for identifying improvement opportunities and converting them readily into bottom line results as a value stream P&L in terms that financial managers and accountants can understand and support. Downloadable resources containing forms, meeting agendas, and examples of X-matrices that serve marketing and design engineering as well as manufacturing. This workbook will show you the mechanics of implementing hoshin kanri, so that you can systematically improve your brand equity, implement Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma, and integrate your suppliers into a Lean and Six Sigma organization.

The greatest concern for all Americans today - leaders and followers alike - is how their prosperity seems to depend on a shrinking foundation of technology-only growth. And the onset of artificial intelligence only threatens to marginalize people even more with job loss and increasing isolation inside the few remaining jobs that it will leave behind. This book helps us understand that business growth fueled by labor productivity does not rely on leadership as we've come to celebrate it, but on our ability to sustain loyalty and commitment to one another- a following if you will - inside and outside our workplaces. When we recognize and understand our historical Followership Cycles, we can begin to restore our workplaces to their lost role as a place to meet the demand of all Americans for a better future. This illuminating book: Provides a new, sustainable growth model based in the socioeconomic realities of modern America and the world it wants to lead - a new Followership System. Tells the story of how one profession, on the brink of disappearing into irrelevance, will lead the new Decision Economy into the 21st century. Demonstrates the development of the "leaderless" specialists who will manage evidence together to pursue a Reason-to-Grow. Stresses the importance of charging all C-Suite executives with leading a continuous process of discovering, articulating and then defending those stakeholder agreements to share purpose. Reveals, not the technology infrastructure, but the social architecture that organizations will use to build new social capital - the Followership that will propel our New Giants to future greatness. New Giants Rising takes us on a journey of the Followership Cycles of our recent past. And, more importantly, it puts forth a plan of action - voiced very simply by Henry Ford during the last cycle over a century ago when he faced the same moment then as we do now: "Coming Together is the Start. Keeping Together is Progress. Working Together is Success."

In Using Hoshin Kanri to Improve the Value Stream, leading lean and quality expert Elizabeth Cudney constructs a complete how-to guide that any organization can employ to start a Lean effort correctly and keep it on track. Rooted in practical examples garnered over years of hand-on practice, she illustrates the key principles of lean and value, and then shows you how to put them to work. Cudney points out that organizations often fail at improvement because they go after symptomatic problems rather than the faulty system-wide processes at the root of those problems. She shows you how to avoid this common misstep by using value stream mapping to create a current-state map. Done properly, this map will help everyone in your organization come to understand just how they deliver value to customers and where flawed processes cause them to fall short. The next step is to create a future-state map that defines best processes. While that may seem easy, reaching the goals of future-state maps requires a highly disciplined effort. At this point, Hoshin Kanri -- the art of policy deployment can make a crucial impact. Hoshin Kanri encourages a systems approach that focuses on the long-term strategy of an organization. As much as defining a methodology, it inspires a positive mindset within your organization by starting with improvements that affect flow across the entire organization. In addition to improving the delivery of value, changes with broad impact will catch people s attention, encourage their involvement and increase the momentum of improvement. Chapter by chapter, this book defines the key tools, such as Six Sigma, 5S, and mistake proofing, that your organization can employ to initiate needed process improvements.

While it is a given that most Lean companies adopt methods to standardize cyclical activities, they often fail to apply the same rigor to noncyclical work, believing that it cannot be measured. Standardized Work for Noncyclical Processes cuts to the core of this mistaken belief and shows you how to measure nonrepeating job processes and eliminate waste associated with noncyclical activities. Taking a hands-on approach reflective of his time as an operator on the line, Joseph Niederstadt lays out the methods he has instituted successfully in more than 30 factories around the world. He defines and details a proven process for building consistent quality products at reduced costs, and includes coverage of activities involving multiple machine job setters, maintenance, stockers, and quality auditors. When implemented correctly this method can help you increase utilization to 85 percent through intelligent data collection. Presenting a wealth of process charts and visual reference tools, the book illustrates how to: Identify abnormalities and waste Foster teamwork and knowledge sharing Promote a safe work environment Ensure a balanced workload Establish a baseline for continuous improvements Throughout the text, the author references blank forms and offers numerous examples of what the forms should look like when populated with the proper data. The downloadable resources include e-versions of all the forms, as well as color versions of images found in the text. "Where there is no standard, there is no improvement."-Taichi Ohno, Toyota

For some organizations, Lessons Learned (LL) is an informal process of discussing and recording project experiences during the closure phase. For others, LL is a formal process that occurs at the end of each phase of a project. Regardless of when they are performed, if you are a project team member, chances are you will soon be required to present an evaluation of your project using Lessons Learned. Presenting new information that updates the award-winning first edition, The Basics of Project Evaluation and Lessons Learned, Second Edition supplies practical guidance on conducting project Lessons Learned. The first edition won the Project Management Institute's (PMI (R)) David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award. Following in the footsteps of its popular predecessor, this second edition provides an easy-to-follow, systematic approach to conducting Lessons Learned on a project. Updated to align with the PMBOK (R) Guide, Fifth Edition Includes three new chapters-PRINCE2 (R), Agile Retrospectives, and Knowledge Transfer- in response to information requests from readers of the first edition from around the world Enhanced with valuable new resources in the Project Evaluation Resource Kit (PERK) found on the downloadable resources, including a fully functional MS Access Lessons Learned Database The research in this book is based on four years of doctoral dissertation research and is supported by renowned experts in the field of evaluation. The concepts covered are applicable to all types of organizations that implement projects and need to conduct Lessons Learned. Providing tools and techniques for active engagement, the text is founded on the principles of conducting project evaluations as recommended by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the world's leading not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, and PRINCE2 (R) (Project in Controlled Environments version 2), a major governing body of project management. Simplifying and formalizing the methodology of conducting LL in projects, the contents of this book will help organizations, large and small, more effectively implement processes and systems to support effective LL. The text is supported by a Project Evaluation Resource Kit (PERK), which is found in the downloadable resources.

Your customers have become increasingly sophisticated and more connected than ever-broadcasting real-time feedback to a cloud of followers who are watching your every move. As savvy customers continue to demand more for less, organizations that choose to rest on their laurels will quickly see their market share evaporate. Gemba Walks for Service Excellence: The Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying Service Delighters guides readers on a journey towards organizational effectiveness that supports a culture of service excellence. It provides a fresh perspective on how to apply Gemba Walks-visiting the areas where the service provider interacts directly with the customer-to identify new service delighters and make a lasting positive impression on customers.Using an abundance of color pictures and hand-drawn graphics, Robert Petruska builds on his considerable experience implementing Lean and quality systems to demonstrate how to create the infrastructure required for service excellence to flourish. Presented in an easy-to-follow format that anyone in the service industry can enjoy, this workbook: Shares proven techniques used in Lean manufacturing that can easily be applied to the service industry Guides new employees and veterans alike through a journey filled with real-life stories that inspire confidence Contains hands-on exercises that allow you to immediately apply the ideas to your own work Includes downloadable resources with innovative "placemats" designed to provide stepping stones on a development path for your team to achieve a competitive advantage Filled with real-world examples and stories of service excellence, the book will help you develop the counterintuitive thinking needed to discover new sources of customer delight. Designed to be used with your entire team, this workbook will guide your organization, step by step, through a plan for assessing, prioritizing, and implementing innovative ideas that will lead to unprecedented levels of service excellence.

The Workforce Engagement Equation is for the hands-on leaders engaged in the frontline of affecting change-those who bear the scars of past failed initiatives yet continue to persevere. Describing the science behind the "Art of Managing" process improvement, it will help you bridge the gap between strategy and tactics and allow you to take concrete action to control ongoing operations sustainably. This step-by-step guide lays out the principles, tools, and techniques that have proven effective in leading and managing the "people side" of process improvement. The book demystifies the complexity of organizational change with easy-to-understand explanations, intuitive graphics, and real-world examples. Filled with helpful practical knowledge, such as the Seven Cardinal Sins of Change Leadership, it will help you assess exactly where your organization is along the change continuum and what actions will help propel your organization to higher levels of organizational effectiveness. Presents methods that can be applied in any organization and situation Supplies guidance on how to build systems and implement performance metrics Offers solutions to real-world problems Integrates powerful concepts from multiple disciplines Aiding your ability to select and apply effective management and leadership techniques that will work best in your situation, The Workforce Engagement Equation provides you with the tools to make a difference in the performance of your organization and the engagement of your workforce. To help you construct your own organizational vessel and navigate the murky waters of organizational change, the text includes downloadable resources with each assessment, form, template, and example project plan contained in the book.

Quality has quickly become one of the most important decision-making factors for consumers. And although organizations invest considerable resources into building the right quality management systems (QMSs), in many instances, the adoption of such quality improvement tools are just not enough. Building Quality Management Systems: Selecting the Right Methods and Tools explains exactly what directors, practitioners, consultants, and researchers must do to make better choices in the design, implementation, and improvement of their QMSs.Based on the authors decades of industrial experience working on business improvement projects for multinationals looking to design or improve their QMSs, the book discusses building QMSs based on two important organizational elements: needs and resources. It begins with an overview of QMSs and systems thinking and the impact of QMSs on financial performance. Illustrating the process management approach, it reviews the most well-known business and quality improvement models, methods, and tools that support a major QMS.The authors introduce their own time-tested methodology for designing, implementing, and enhancing your own QMS. Using their proven method, you will learn how to: Implement a strategic quality plan based on your specific needs, capabilities, cost benefits, policies, and business strategies Select the right models, methods, and tools to be adopted as part of your QMS Understand the critical success factors and implementation challenges Evaluate the level of maturity of your QMS and your implementation efforts Highlighting the importance of quality as a way of life, this book supplies the understanding you'll need to make the right choices in the development and deployment of your QMS. With a clear focus on business performance and process management, it provides the basis for creating the quality management culture require

All employees want themselves and their colleagues to be better engaged at work, but most just can't get past the talking stage to actually developing an effective plan. This book is a step-by-step "how-to" guide for those who develop and complete projects - not just supervisors and continuous improvement professionals. Like instructions for "assembly required" projects, this book takes you one step at a time into creating a project that makes your work easier, better, and more satisfying. This book identifies the benefits of-and strategies for-developing engaged employees who will implement and sustain your Lean processes. You will learn and practice tools for creating and sustaining engagement and how to align your goals with your strategy, ensuring that your desired future becomes a reality. In addition, after reading this book, you'll be able to: Recognize barriers to building engaged teams and individuals, and then select strategies for overcoming these hurdles. Practice communication and team relationship skills that will help you to nurture long-term process improvements. Gain information about key listening skills, as well as steps to enhance recognition systems.

How do you take talented engineers and surround them with the elements needed to create brilliant designs that lead to market-changing products? Lean 3P is how.Winner of a 2013 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award !Written from an operations perspective, The Lean 3P Advantage: A Practitioner's Guide to the Production Preparation Process explains how to build collaborative thinking and innovation into the front end of the design process. Describing how to develop successful new products concurrently with new operations, the book illustrates real-world scenarios with numerous examples and case studies to help newcomers succeed the first time around. For those familiar with 3P, the book supplies the basis to explore Evergreen 3P a process for applying 3P to small-scale design projects for similar benefits. Details the 3P Lean Design process, explaining how and why it works so effectively Includes case studies and examples of real-world applications Presents time-tested methods based on the combined experience of numerous practicing companies Coverage includes product planning and evaluation criteria, selection of alternatives, timing considerations, construction of prototypes, and measuring effectiveness. This book will help you and your team develop holistic designs that foster innovation and deliver products and production operations that effectively utilize people and exceed the expectations of all stakeholders.

Second Edition of a Shingo Prize Winner Based on the author's personal experience with Toyota s master teachers and with companies in the midst of great change, Andy and Me: Crisis and Transformation on the Lean Journey, now in its second edition, is a business novel set in a failing New Jersey auto plant focusing on the tribulations of Tom Pappas, the plant manager. The situations, characters, and plant politics will ring true with many readers. In a cool, readable style, this highly popular work follows Tom's relationship with Andy Saito, a reclusive retired Toyota guru whom Tom persuades to help save his plant through the teaching of the legendary Toyota Production System (TPS). On this journey, the reader learns that TPS is more than just a collection of tools; it entails a new way of thinking and behaving. Though Tom finds success both in his plant and in his personal life he learns from Andy that successful improvement is endless and eternal.This edition includes study questions after each chapter to support your learning and help you tell some of your own stories. Pascal Dennis discusses the 2nd edition of his Shingo Prize-winning book Andy and Me.

Innovation is a primary source of economic growth, and yet only one idea out of 3,000 becomes a successful product or service. Scalable Innovation: A Guide for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and IP Professionals introduces a model for the innovation process, helping innovators to understand the nature and timing of opportunities and risks on the path to success. The authors apply systems thinking to discover real-life challenges, and provide tools for turning these challenges into opportunities for practical, scalable innovation.The book is organized into four sections: Prologue exposes key barriers to creativity and innovation. It provides telling examples of how years in school and at work make us accept common wisdoms that are likely to hurt our chances to create or take advantage of breakthrough innovations. Section I introduces a system model for understanding technology and solving problems. It shows how to connect the model with real-life solutions, including their reflection in patents. Section II introduces tools for thinking outside the box, considers the role of luck in success of inventions, and presents tools for flexible thinking and imagination development. Section III discusses system dynamics, including how the elements of systems evolve, creating space for invention and scalable innovation. The authors illustrate this with case studies from various industries and technology areas. They analyze several landmark innovations in detail, revealing surprising and essential elements common to all of them. This book presents simple principles that form the foundation of successful innovation, enabling practitioners to anticipate and expedite the creation of value through the guided innovation process. It outlines the most common barriers in reasoning and false beliefs about innovation that impede p

Although there are countless books available on strategic management, there are few, if any, that supply practical coverage of strategic planning, execution, and measurement until now. Considering the entire value chain, this book covers the complete process of strategic planning, execution, and measurement.Based on three decades of field-tested experience, Strategic Planning, Execution, and Measurement (SPEM): A Powerful Tool for CEOs provides both a consultant's view and an entrepreneurial approach to strategic planning, execution, and measurement. Walking you through the process, it begins by defining world-class status, visions, missions, business models, and value chains. Next, it discusses the two most important prerequisites of strategic planning and includes a questionnaire to help you evaluate operations, systems, and structure in your organization.The book provides a matrix of 25 parameters for assessing the status of your organization that can help to pinpoint the perceptional gaps between top executives and owners. It includes a strategy bank with 150 generic strategies in the five performance areas of business and identifies methods for monitoring strategy execution that provide early warning signals. It also introduces the Entrepreneurial Score Card, a tool for improving the impact of strategic planning and execution in your organization.Detailing the structure and preparation process for the strategic plan, the book illustrates the financial impact of strategy execution and explains the various financial monitoring parameters used in the performance cards of individual employees. It concludes by describing an entrepreneurial approach to strategic planning and with a comprehensive case study that illustrates the entire strategy formulation process and its conversion into an annual budget.This book is ideal for CEOs, CFOs, COOs, business owners, heads of business verticals, heads of corporate planning

Enabling management to verify that processes are being performed correctly and in an efficient manner, standardized work provides limitless opportunities for process improvements. So much so, that it has become a vital component of improvement efforts in Lean enterprise systems. New Horizons in Standardized Work: Techniques for Manufacturing and Business Process Improvement is an all-inclusive guide to applying standardized work principles to virtually any business in any industry. It facilitates a fundamental understanding of standardized work principles and the logic behind their development, so readers can successfully extend and adapt them to their own work situation. It also: Supplies an accessible introduction to standardized work, from a cyclic perspective Explains how to instill and maintain quality in work processes right from the get go Provides the foundational basis required to apply standardized work concepts to a wide range of work situations Includes several appendices with helpful tips and problem-solving tools In a step-by-step format, this book discusses the relationship of the work period and the takt time, as well as the importance of the three main worker interface levels in job design. It includes an array of examples that demonstrate how the concepts discussed can be applied across a range of industries including health care, construction, business processes, and food services.

Provides Reassurance and Suggestions From Those Who Have Walked the Same Lean Road Perhaps the most fundamental challenge that companies adopting a lean strategy must face is how to sustain initial momentum and develop a corporate culture with an ongoing commitment to that strategy. While efficient tools and strategies are essential to the cause, just as critical is a shared confidence that this endeavor is the right course. While one has to make the road by walking it, knowing that others have walked a similar path can both be instructive and encouraging. Make Rapid Changes and Enjoy Long-Term Success Sustaining Lean: Case Studies in Transforming Culture, the third compilation of articles originally published in AME's well-regarded Target Magazine, provides accounts of challenges encountered and methods applied by organizations in pursuit of lean. While a few of the articles broadly discuss issues involved in long-term transformation, the vast majority provide illuminating and often inspirational case studies. Following an insightful introduction by noted lean expert David Mann, this compelling volume tells the stories of companies that overcame significant cultural challenges. It helps any manager understand what it takes to communicate a vision of improvement and achieve the empowerment of stakeholders vital to rapid change and long-term success.