The Toyota Way
by Jeffrey Liker
from McGraw-Hill
How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industry
In factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.
Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota's principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:
- Eliminating wasted time and resources
- Building quality into workplace systems
- Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology
- Producing in small quantities
- Turning every employee into a qualitycontrol inspector
The Six Sigma Handbook: The Complete Guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts, and Managers at All Levels, Revised and Expanded Edition
by Thomas Pyzdek
from McGraw-Hill
Brand new book, autographed by author.
Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference
by Quint Studer
from Fire Starter Publishing
A "textbook with passion", Hardwiring Excellence offers a road map and practical how-to guide for creating and sustaining a culture of service and operational excellence. In this book, author Quint Studer, CEO of Studer Group, draws on his personal experience as a former hospital executive who led two organizations to the top 1% in patient satisfaction and his experience coaching hundreds of healthcare organizations since.
Studer, a nationally acclaimed educator, coach, and thought leader in healthcare today, is a master storyteller, mixing "chicken soup style" stories with personal insight, simple tools, and in-depth recommendations on how good organizations can become great ones.
Based on Studer Group's Nine Principles SM, Quint Studer shows how to retain more employees; ensure better customer service; build strong leadership, align organizational values, goals, and results; increase communication; reward and recognize individual success while also requiring accountability; and move operational performance for better financials, market share, and growth.
At the core of the journey, he says, is a sense of purpose, worthwhile work and making a difference. When organizations learn how to harness this passion in their employees, they create a success spiral with ever increasing momentum.
In fact, Richard L. Clarke, FHFMA, President and CEO of Healthcare Financial Management Association says, "Quint Studer's Nine Principles of service and operational excellence provide the missing link between people power and strong financials. It's about courageous leadership."
Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
by James P. Womack
from Free Press
In the revised and updated edition of Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones provide a thoughtful expansion upon their value-based business system based on the Toyota model. Along the way they update their action plan in light of new research and the increasing globalization of manufacturing, and they revisit some of their key case studies (most of which still derive, however, from the automotive, aerospace, and other manufacturing industries).
The core of the lean model remains the same in the new edition. All businesses must define the "value" that they produce as the product that best suits customer needs. The leaders must then identify and clarify the "value stream," the nexus of actions to bring the product through problems solving, information management, and physical transformation tasks. Next, "lean enterprise" lines up suppliers with this value stream. "Flow" traces the product across departments. "Pull" then activates the flow as the business re-orients towards the pull of the customer's needs. Finally, with the company reengineered towards its core value in a flow process, the business re-orients towards "perfection," rooting out all the remaining muda (Japanese for "waste") in the system.
Despite the authors' claims to "actionable principles for creating lasting value in any business during any business conditions," the lean model is not demonstrated with broad applications in the service or retail industries. But those manager's whose needs resonate with those described in the Lean Thinking case studies will find a host of practical guidelines for streamlining their processes and achieving manufacturing efficiencies. --Patrick O'Kelley
Expanded, updated, and more relevant than ever, this bestselling business classic by two internationally renowned management analysts describes a business system for the twenty-first century that supersedes the mass production system of Ford, the financial control system of Sloan, and the strategic system of Welch and GE. It is based on the Toyota (lean) model, which combines operational excellence with value-based strategies to produce steady growth through a wide range of economic conditions.
In contrast with the crash-and-burn performance of companies trumpeted by business gurus in the 1990s, the firms profiled in Lean Thinking -- from tiny Lantech to midsized Wiremold to niche producer Porsche to gigantic Pratt & Whitney -- have kept on keeping on, largely unnoticed, along a steady upward path through the market turbulence and crushed dreams of the early twenty-first century. Meanwhile, the leader in lean thinking -- Toyota -- has set its sights on leadership of the global motor vehicle industry in this decade.
Instead of constantly reinventing business models, lean thinkers go back to basics by asking what the customer really perceives as value. (It's often not at all what existing organizations and assets would suggest.) The next step is to line up value-creating activities for a specific product along a value stream while eliminating activities (usually the majority) that don't add value. Then the lean thinker creates a flow condition in which the design and the product advance smoothly and rapidly at the pull of the customer (rather than the push of the producer). Finally, as flow and pull are implemented, the lean thinker speeds up the cycle of improvement in pursuit of perfection. The first part of this book describes each of these concepts and makes them come alive with striking examples.
Lean Thinking clearly demonstrates that these simple ideas can breathe new life into any company in any industry in any country. But most managers need guidance on how to make the lean leap in their firm. Part II provides a step-by-step action plan, based on in-depth studies of more than fifty lean companies in a wide range of industries across the world.
Even those readers who believe they have embraced lean thinking will discover in Part III that another dramatic leap is possible by creating an extended lean enterprise for each of their product families that tightly links value-creating activities from raw materials to customer.
In Part IV, an epilogue to the original edition, the story of lean thinking is brought up-to-date with an enhanced action plan based on the experiences of a range of lean firms since the original publication of Lean Thinking.
Lean Thinking does not provide a new management "program" for the one-minute manager. Instead, it offers a new method of thinking, of being, and, above all, of doing for the serious long-term manager -- a method that is changing the world.
Operations Management: Processes and Value Chains, 8th edition
by Lee J. Krajewski
from Prentice Hall
This book blends the latest in strategic OM issues with proven analytic techniques.
While maintaining its perspective on the big picture and the strategic importance of operations, this edition shifts its overall approach to a process orientation–both service and manufacturing.
Industrial Engineers and Production and Operations Managers.
Theory and Design for Mechanical Measurements
by Richard S. Figliola
from Wiley
The new measure of excellence
Now revised to reflect the latest standards and advances, Figliola and Beasley's Fourth Edition provides a timely and in-depth reference to the theory of engineering measurements, measurement system performance, and instrumentation. The authors show you how to develop, operate, and analyze measurement systems and report results. The text covers uncertainty analysis and mechanical measurements in one unified presentation, introducing you to the most powerful experimental tools available.
Features of the Fourth Edition:
* Updated to reflect the newest ASME/ASNI Test Uncertainty nomenclature and ISO vocabulary.
* Expanded treatment of mechatronics concepts (Chapter 12, Appendix C).
* More practical use of operational amplifiers in discussion of signal conditioning circuits.
* Labview files for self-tutorials on critical concepts and Matlab files for system analyses are available for download on the text's website. www.wiley.com/college/figliola
* Updated and revised problem sets, with an emphasis on design considerations.
About the Authors
Richard Figliola, Ph.D. is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering at Clemson University, where he was awarded the Murray Stokely Excellence in Teaching Award. He is a member of the ASME PTC 19.1 Executive Committee on Test Uncertainty and a founding member of the ASME K-21 Education Committee. Dr. Figliola holds 5 patents for products in medical blood flow, materials processing, and electronic cooling.
Donald Beasley, Ph.D. is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. He has received numerous teaching awards over the years, including the Murray Stokely Excellence in Teaching Award at Clemson. Dr. Beasley is a consultant to the golf equipment industry, serving on the product editorial board of Golf Digest. His research areas include heat transfer, thermal engineering, and measurement methods.
Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence (with CD-ROM)
by James R. Evans
from South-Western College Pub
Prepare for success in quality management today with this leading text's focus on the fundamental principles and emphasis on high performance management practices, such as those reflected in the Baldrige Criteria. These authors are experienced leaders in the fields of performance management and quality. Look no further for the definitive resource for coverage of ISO 9000 certification, Six Sigma, and the U.S. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award standards. A wealth of current examples from leading organizations reflect quality throughout the world as they emphasize the practical aspects of the book's managerial focus and pertinent technical topics. You can efficiently prepare to become an ASQ Certified Quality Manager, as this edition covers most of the Body of Knowledge required for ASQ certification. It's everything you need, now and throughout your career, to ensure quality management success.
The Memory Jogger II
by Michael Brassard
from Goal/QPC
The Memory Jogger II is an easy-to-use pocket guide that describes tools to help you make continuous improvements in an organization. The tools help people at all levels participate in identifying and solving problems; eliminating rework; streamlining processes; improving cross-functional communication; decreasing costs; and measuring results. The guide supports organization-wide consistency and participation in creating organizational breakthroughs and improvements. It measures 3.5" x 5.5".
Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions
by David Mann
from Productivity Press
2006 SHINGO PRIZE for EXCELLENCE in MANUFACTURING RESEARCH
Lean production has been proven unbeatable in organizing production operations, yet the majority of attempts to implement lean end in disappointing results. The critical factor so often overlooked is that lean implementation requires day-to-day, hour-by-hour management practices and skills that leaders in conventional batch-and-queue environments are neither familiar nor comfortable with.
Creating a Lean Culture helps lean leaders succeed in their personal batch-to-lean transformation. It provides a practical guide to implementing the missing links needed to sustain a lean implementation. Mann provides critical guidance on developing and using the key elements of a lean management system, including: leader standard work, visual controls, daily accountability processes, maintaining a process focus, managing key HR issues, and much more. In addition, a questionnaire is included to help assess current management practices andmonitor progress.
Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results
by Michael E. Porter
from Harvard Business School Press
The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing costs--not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.
In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael E. Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg reveal the underlying and largely overlooked causes of the problem and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level--among health plans, networks, and hospitals--rather than where it matters most: in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions.
In spite of competition among these systems, the patient care cycle is poorly coordinated. The fractured system undermines both efficiency and quality of outcomes.
Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value over the full cycle of care—from prevention and diagnosis through recovery or long-term disease management. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to value-based competition on results that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.
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