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.

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.

Polymer films now play an essential and growing role in sensors. Recent advances in polymer science and film preparation have made polymer films useful, practical and economical in a wide range of sensor designs and applications. Further, the continuing miniaturization of microelectronics favors the use of polymer thin films in sensors.
This new book is the first comprehensive presentation of this technology. It covers both scientific fundamentals and practical engineering aspects. Included is an extensive survey of all types of sensors and applications. The very detailed table of contents in the next pages provides full information on content. More than 200 schematics illustrate a wide variety of sensor structures and their function.

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

In early America, most children had only a few toys and parents receivedadvice from family and friends on the best ways to make and use toys. By the early 1900s the Industrial Revolution was producing a new world of toys and giving more parents the wealth to buy them. Mass media also sang the praises of these new factory-made, store-bought toys, but that began to change as early as the mid1900s when the mass media was used to inform parents of the many dangers of childrens toys. Many encourage violence, sexism, racism, and some are actually unsafe and unhealthy.

The development of childrens toys from early America to the present time and the shifting opinions of them expressed by parents and the mass media throughout this time are the main subjects of this book. The first sectiondiscusses the many problems with toys, while the second puts these problems in historical perspective. How have these problems changed, and are still changing today? Might todays toys be about to enter a time when they will be better than ever? The third section argues that many media toy watchers are biased toward the negative, giving toys more of a black eye than they deserve, and considers the the challenges that face todays parents as they try to choose the best toys for their children.

If you currently employ knowledge workers who do most of their work on computers or with computers, access the Internet, utilize internal and external databases, use e-mail or other new messaging technology, then this book is for you. Quite simply, this handbook is for any organization with a lot of Web DNA that wishes to cut costs, improve performance, and stay perpetually competitive. It is for change agents or managers within those organizations who work with information and want to leverage the latest crop of tool sets to deliver on the promise of Lean for the modern, information-rich office. packed with new ideas breaks new ground in so many directions . John Bicheno, Director, Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff Business School excellent on several levels teaches us how to visualize the depth of hidden wastes in our complex information flows and the large opportunity for improvement that this suggests. Keith Russell, PhD, Global Continuous Improvement Leader RandD, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Very interesting view on operational excellence, helpful to readers without a background in this area of expertise. Bert Nordberg, President and CEO. Sony Ericsson Congratulations to all the readers holding this book! ... These Lean ideas must be an integral part of the daily operations of your business. I am going to get each and every one of my management team a copy of this brilliant book at the start for our own Lean journey. Lennart K , CEO, Wasa Kredit It s one thing to develop a concept. It s another to make it sing. This is the hymnal. Dr. Don V. Steward, CEO Problematics, Professor Emeritus, Sacramento State University, inventor of DSM a must read for CIOs everywhere." Julian Amey, Principal Fellow, Warwick University

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.

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.

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.

The Excellent Education System:Using Six Sigma to Transform Schools helps you discover and understand the technique of evidence-based learning and operations through which the modern school satisfies the need to increase the flow of successful students through the educational system from Kindergarten through Grade 12. This book explains, in clear terms, what educational excellence means and the principles of process improvement. In addition, it gives your an introduction to the Six Sigma methodology. Included in the discussion are case studies of educational professionals who have found a new world centered in the evidence-based educational processes. These processes lead to many examples of dramatic turnarounds in some failing schools. The author presents strategies and actions that you can use to improve schools such as those presented in the case studies. The Appendices provide a wide variety of tactical resources for implementation.

This is a primary text project that combines sustainability development with engineering entrepreneurship and design to present a transdisciplinary approach to modern engineering education. The book is distinguished by extensive descriptions of concepts in sustainability, its principles, and its relevance to environment, economy, and society. It can be read by all engineers regardless of their disciplines as well as by engineering students as they would be future designers of products and systems. This book presents a flexible organization of knowledge in various fields, which allows to be used as a text in a number of courses including for example, engineering entrepreneurship and design, engineering innovation and leadership, and sustainability in engineering design

A groundbreaking study of the development of mechanical and metal cased pencils in the nineteenth century. Illustrated with over 700 photographs, the book provides examples of the extraordinary variety of propelling pencils that were created between 1800 and 1920. Readers will be struck by the ingenuity of the inventors and creators of this (until now) forgotten form of decorative art. From metal cased pencils that are elegantly practical, to "magic" pencils that are more whimsical than functional, this book follows the progress of the mechanical pencil as it evolves from a usable tool to something more akin to jewelry. This history of mechanical pencils also includes definitions of terms, descriptions of various mechanisms, ornamentation and surface decoration, and the multitude of combinations created by nineteenth century pencil-case makers. Value ranges are also included.

Intelligence-Based Medicine: Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Cognition in Clinical Medicine and Healthcare provides a multidisciplinary and comprehensive survey of artificial intelligence concepts and methodologies with real life applications in healthcare and medicine. Authored by a senior physician-data scientist, the book presents an intellectual and academic interface between the medical and the data science domains that is symmetric and balanced. The content consists of basic concepts of artificial intelligence and its real-life applications in a myriad of medical areas as well as medical and surgical subspecialties. It brings section summaries to emphasize key concepts delineated in each section; mini-topics authored by world-renowned experts in the respective key areas for their personal perspective; and a compendium of practical resources, such as glossary, references, best articles, and top companies. The goal of the book is to inspire clinicians to embrace the artificial intelligence methodologies as well as to educate data scientists about the medical ecosystem, in order to create a transformational paradigm for healthcare and medicine by using this emerging new technology.

The book contains high quality papers presented in conference Recent Advances in Mechanical Infrastructure (ICRAM-2019) held at IITRAM, Ahmedabad, India from 20-21 April, 2019.The topics covered in this book are recent advances in thermal infrastructure, manufacturing infrastructure and infrastructure planning and design.

Most business readers have heard of the Lean principles developed for factories a set of tools and ideas that have enabled companies to dramatically boost quality by reducing waste and errors producing more while using less. Yet until now, few have recognized how relevant these powerful ideas are to individuals and their daily work. Every person at a desk, drafting table, workstation, or operating table must (like a factory) deal with the challenge of reducing the waste that creeps into their work. The same Lean principles that have improved efficiencies on the factory floor can be just as powerful in fact, far more so in helping individuals boost personal performance. Winner of a 2013 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award!A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance describes how you can foster a new mindset and improve your performance by applying Lean methods to your work. It translates powerful Lean tools such as visual management, flow, pull, 5S, and kaizen to your daily work, revealing how they can help to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and link you ever more closely to customer value. This practice will help you develop better self-awareness, more disciplined problem-solving skills, and the ability to self-correct errors. This book not only provides the tools, but also teaches you how to find the root causes underlying your inefficiencies so you can eliminate them permanently. It will enable you to immediately improve personal productivity while developing the skills needed for continuous improvement. It includes real-world examples that illustrate how these principles have been successfully applied across a range of industries. Providing the perfect mix of what-to-do with why-to-do it, the text details a step-by-step approach to applying Lean principles to your work. Listen to what Daniel Markovitz has to say about his ne

With an estimated 70 percent of new projects failing to add value to the organization, reducing project failure rate represents one of the biggest improvement opportunities available today. This book highlights proven approaches designed to separate the successful projects from the potential losers before the projects are started. This represents huge savings in manpower, money, and time. The book shows you how to reduce project cycle time and apply resources effectively to maximize results and project success rates. Effective Portfolio Management Systems provides a roadmap for the implementation of an organizational Portfolio Project Management (PPM) system and a model for driving sustainable change. It takes you through the complete project/program management cycle from the submittal of the proposed projects to the management of their implementation. To do this, the authors present an effective, proven, four-phase Organizational Portfolio Management (OPM) system: Phase I: Developing the Organizational Portfolio involves selecting the right mix of projects/programs based upon resource limitations and risks involved. Phase II: Creating the OPM System Implementation Plan is the development of a plan to minimize the resources consumed, reduce cycle time, and increase the ability of the projects to meet their projected value-added content to the organization. Phase III: Implementing the OPM System focuses on the complexity of managing an Organizational Portfolio and keeping it aligned with the organization's goals and objectives. This phase provides a roadmap for the implementation of an organizational PPM system, including sample plans and PMO Implementation/Management Templates. Phase IV: Practical Applications of Project Change Management within the OPM System focuses on overcoming the difficulties related to the continuous changing environment and project

Welcome to the exciting world of fast food toy collecting. Over the years fast food restaurants have distributed hundreds of toys based on Disney characters. This book contains a thorough listing and price guide for all of your favorite toys and over-the-counter promotions. Hundreds of color photographs give you a visual reference for fast food figures from around the world. There are listings for toys dating back to 1987, organized by year, country, and restaurant to help you pinpoint that missing or unknown toy, and to assemble your want list.

The book is about applying Lean manufacturing principles to industrial maintenance in order to improve the efficiency and be able to do more with the same (or less) resources. By industrial maintenance we mean the maintenance that takes place in factories and industrial facilities. The book is the result of multiple improvement projects carried out by the authors in various industrial settings and sectors in the past 10 years.The approach works and can be applied in any industry. It yields results without investment. The book is a step-by-step guide that takes the reader through the maintenance process, from equipment failure to finished repair. In each step of the process, the typical inefficiencies are explained and tools are given to improve the process. The book is meant to be used as a guide in an improvement journey. The improvement approach presented in the book is very close to the shop floor and instructs the reader to engage with all team members in the maintenance department in every step of the process, in order to make the improvements sustainable. If one looks at the main market indexes, between one third and one half of companies on those indexes belong to the industrial sector: automotive, power generation, basic materials, chemicals, consumer goods, et cetera. Those companies spend on average 2 - 5% of plant replacement value per year on maintenance. About one third of this cost is maintenance labor. The maintenance work that gets done every day in factories around the world is typically inefficient, from a Lean perspective: time is wasted, different tasks are not properly coordinated, job durations are overestimated and job plans, when they exist, are thus "inflated" to cover up the inefficiency. All this happens because maintenance tends to be the "forgotten" area of efficiency in industrial companies, as much of the improvements are carried out on the (literally) productive areas of the factories. When companies set out to "improve" maintenance, they typically do it through budget cuts that can risk the reliability of the equipment. The authors believe there is a better way to do more with the same resources through a careful review of the current way of working and the introduction of Lean. With this book , the authors try to bring to maintenance managers and practitioners the tools they need to quickly improve efficiency (in a matter of weeks) without any investment.

Business-Driven IT-Wide Agile (Scrum) and Kanban (Lean) Implementation: An Action Guide for Business and IT Leaders explains how to increase IT delivery capabilities through the use of Agile and Kanban. Factoring in constant change, communication, a sense of urgency, clear and measurable goals, political realities, and infrastructure needs, it covers all the ingredients required for success. Using real-world examples, this practical guide illustrates how to implement Agile and Kanban in software project management and development across the entire IT department. To make things easier for busy IT leaders and executives, the text includes two case studies along with numerous templates to facilitate understanding and kick-start implementation. Explaining how IT and business management can work together to determine business goals that drive this IT-wide undertaking, the book arms you with actionable solutions that can be put to use immediately in any IT department, regardless of size.

This book gives healthcare leaders a practical guide to implementing the 4 key components of lean daily management system - 1. LDM boards; 2. Leadership rounds 3. Leader daily disciplines and 4. Lean projects. Although lean is not new to healthcare, effective LDM is just now taking hold with the best lean healthcare organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Leaders are realizing that sustaining their lean projects over time has proven to be a challenge without first addressing the organizations management system/model. LDM gives leaders a straightforward approach to do just that as well as improve their ability to spread and deploy lean to other areas of the organization and tie back to strategy.

The principles of mistake proofing, long used to eliminate errors and defects across a range of industries, are now being applied in healthcare organizations around the world to help ensure patient safety, improve services, and eliminate waste.Mistake Proofing for Lean Healthcare is based on the definitive mistake-proofing philosophy and system developed by Shigeo Shingo. This reader-friendly book introduces the main concepts and benefits of mistake proofing in healthcare and highlights common reasons that errors and defects occur. It also explains how to catch errors before they become defects, using the concept of "source inspection," so you can ensure quality before a process is performed instead of afterward. When systematically used, the mistake-proofing approach explained in this book will help you: Create safer, more reliable, and more effective healthcare services for both patients and staff Establish a culture in which mistakes and the conditions that cause them are readily surfaced so they can be corrected Lay the foundation for processes that flow smoothly, without disruption Eliminate rework, waste, and the need for extra resources and supplies Presenting real-world healthcare examples, the book shows different types of mistake-proofing devices and methods (poka-yoke) that provide feedback quickly and automatically to prevent errors and defects.The book is part of the Lean Healthcare Series and is designed for individual or group learning. Each chapter includes reflection questions to facilitate understanding and stimulate discussion and action.

Proven to increase efficiencies in the manufacturing sector, Standard Work has become a key element in reducing process waste, ensuring patient safety, and improving healthcare services. Part of the Lean Tools for Healthcare Series, this reader-friendly book builds on the success of the bestselling, Standard Work for the Shopfloor. Standard Work for Lean Healthcare explains how to apply this powerful Lean tool to increase patient safety and reduce the cost of providing healthcare services. It illustrates how standardization can help you establish best practices for performing daily work and why it should be the cornerstone for all of your continuous improvement efforts. Presented in an easy-to-assimilate format, the book describes work in terms of cycle time, work in process, takt time, and layout. It also: Defines the key concepts of standard work and explores the essential elements of a continuous improvement culture Provides detailed guidance through the process of creating, maintaining, and improving standards Illustrates the application of standardization and standard work in healthcare with a range of examples Includes access to helpful websites and further reading on standardization, standard work, the 5S System, and Lean healthcare A joint effort between the Rona Consulting Group and Productivity Press, this book presents invaluable insights from pioneers in Lean thinking to help you avoid common mistakes that can lead to unnecessary wastes of time and resources. Each richly illustrated chapter includes a chapter summary, reflection questions, and margin assists that highlight key terms, how-to steps, and healthcare examples making this an essential resource for healthcare professionals starting out on their Lean journey.

While there are a growing number of books based on the Toyota Production System, or lean, focused on healthcare, there are very few that detail the tools that make lean more than just a way of thinking and put the methodology into practice. Based on Hiroyuki Hirano's classic 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace and modeled after the Shingo Prize-winning Shopfloor Series for Lean Manufacturers, 5S for Healthcare adopts a proven reader-friendly format to impart all the information needed to understand and implement this essential lean methodology. It provides examples and cased studies based on the experiences of the principals involved with the Rona Consulting Group, who were responsible for the groundbreaking implementation of the Toyota Production System at the Virginia Mason Medical Center. Written to readily assist with hands-on implementation efforts, this volume offers innovative features designed to improve understanding and support application. This includes helpful how-to-steps and practical examples taken directly from the healthcare industry.