Lean concepts help organizations eliminate waste and build in quality by challenging employees to find efficiencies in their everyday jobs and by completing their work correctly the first time. Lean concepts can be implemented in just about any area of your business; they are not limited to the warehouse or the supply chain. For example, they can be used in Transportation, Manufacturing, and even in Human Resources. There are many Lean tools available to help you and your organization implement and carry out a Lean culture. These include:
- Lean Academy for Red Belt and Green Belt certification
- Workplace organization (WPO) and Visual management to ensure there is a ‘place for everything and everything is in its place’
- Work cell dashboards
- Employee suggestion systems
- Standardized Quality problem solving process
If you or your organization is just embarking on the Lean journey, you probably want to learn more about how Lean concepts can help drive the business forward.
Here are some resources we recommend:
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
By: James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones
Focus: Lean Culture
Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition
By: David Mann
Focus: Lean Culture
Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor and Lead
By John Shook (Author), Jim Womack (Foreword)
Focus: A3 – PDCA Process
Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA
By Mike Rother (Author), John Shook (Author), Jim Womack (Foreword), Dan Jones (Foreword)
Focus: Value Stream Mapping (Basic)
Seeing the Whole: Mapping the Extended Value Stream (Lean Enterprise Institute)
By: Daniel T. Jones (Author), James P. Womack
Focus: Value Stream Mapping (Advanced)
Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation
By: Steven C Bell, Michael A Orzen
Focus: Information Technology
What other books have you read that Lean beginners would benefit from?
To learn more about Lean, read our Lean Guiding Principles White Paper Series.
