Management Books

• Toyota Under Fire: Lessons for Turning Crisis into Opportunity by Jeffrey Liker
  Toyota Under Fire, 2011 Shingo Prize Winner, takes you beyond the headlines and into the offices and factories of Toyota to reveal the truth behind the company's highly publicized and controversial recall of over 10 million vehicles.

• Gemba Walks: by Jim Womack
  This book complies Womack's essays on the practice of lean and adds some additional context to the essays.

• The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality by W. Edwards Deming, Joyce Orsini
  The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well. Published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming captures Deming's life's worth of thinking and writing. Dr. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization.

• The Birth of Lean:
  The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master plan—TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyota’s structure and management system. This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. You’ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking. In The Birth of Lean, you’ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the system’s creators and innovators: • Taiichi Ohno—the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System • Eiji Toyoda—the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota • Kikuo Suzumura—the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohno’s ideas into actionable items • Michikazu Tanaka—the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization • Kaneyoshi Kusunoki—the former head of Toyota’s production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyota’s operations • Masao Nemoto—the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

• Just-In-Time for Today and Tomorrow: Japanese Management Series by Taiichi Ohno
  

• Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System by Art Smalley, Durward K. Sobek
  Winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize. The A3 report has proven to be a key tool In Toyota’s successful move toward organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and improvement, especially within its engineering and R&D organizations. The power of the A3 report, however, derives not from the report itself, but rather from the development of the culture and mindset required for the implementation of the A3 system. In other words, A3 reports are not just an end product but are evidence of a powerful set of dynamics that is referred to as A3 Thinking.

• Tool Time Handbook 1.0 for Lean: by David P. Langford
  Co-authored by David P. Langford and Sarah Pavelka, this spiral bound handbook is an excellent resource. It is written in an easy-to-understand format with diagrams and explanations of 23 Lean Quality Improvement Tools and their suggested uses. You'll understand how Lean tools can successfully be applied to the 9 Step PDSA Improvement Process (Plan-Do-Study-Act Process). Our goal was simplicity. Each tool has a process explanation and is graphically represented. All of the Lean Quality Learning tools are also referenced to the 9 Step PDSA cycle for fast tool selection and implementation. This enables you to spend less time selecting tools and more time learning how, when and where to use them. Tool Time for Lean books are being used by students, administrators, board members, personnel staff, healthcare professionals, and business leaders, as well as by employees from schools, universities, corporations, hospitals, and government agencies.

• Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements by Mark Graban
  Healthcare Kaizen focuses on the principles and methods of daily continuous improvement, or Kaizen, for healthcare professionals and organizations. The experiences shared in this book prove that people actually love change when they are fully engaged in the process, get to make improvements that improve patient care and make their day less frustrating, and when they don’t fear being laid off as a result of their improvements. All of the examples in the book were shared by leading healthcare organizations, with over 200 full-color pictures and visual illustrations of Kaizen-based improvements that were initiated by nurses, physicians, housekeepers, senior executives and other staff members at all levels.

• Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno by Taiichi Ohno
  "If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32

• The Lean Startup: by Eric Ries
  Great book that is also very popular in general management circles and software development circles (the software development and startup areas overlap so much today that this is no surprise). The book focuses on applying lean thinking ideas in an entrepreneurial setting. So the book focuses on quick success and customer focus. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or those in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility and quickly. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

• Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones
  "few companies today see consumption as a process -- a series of linked goods and services, all of which must occur seamlessly for the consumer to be satisfied. Buying a home computer, for example, involves researching, purchasing, integrating..."

• Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother
  "Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress—and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture." —Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way

• The Birth of Lean: by Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda
  by Koichi Shimokawa and Takahiro Fujimoto (Editors). There are a lot of books that describe the Toyota Production System, but most do so in a way that implies that there was a master plan to create a company-wide improvement system. But as the pioneers in The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master plan—TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyota’s structure and management system. This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. You’ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking. In The Birth of Lean, you’ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the system’s creators and innovators: Taiichi Ohno ”the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System Eiji Toyoda ”the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota Kikuo Suzumura ”the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohno’s ideas into actionable items Michikazu Tanaka ”the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization Kaneyoshi Kusunoki ”the former head of Toyota's production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyota’s operations Masao Nemoto ”the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

• Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck
  

• The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance by Gerald J. Langley, Ron Moen, Thomas Nolan, Cliff Norman, Lloyd Provost
  Second edition of this great handbook for process improvement. The best resource for applying the plan-do-study-act cycle to improvement. Highly recommended

• Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker, David Meier
  Toyota Talent walks you through the rigorous methodology used by this global powerhouse to grow high-performing individuals from within. Beginning with a review of Toyota's landmark approach to developing people, the authors illustrate the critical importance of creating a learning and teaching culture in your organization. They provide specific examples necessary to train employees in all areas-from the shop floor to engineering to staff members in service organizations-and show you how to support and encourage every individual to reach his or her top potential. Toyota Talent provides you with the inside knowledge you need to * Identify your development needs and create a training plan * Understand the various types of work and how to break complicated jobs into teachable skills * Set behavioral expectations by properly preparing your workplace * Recognize and develop potential trainers within your workforce * Effectively educate non-manufacturing employees and members of the staff * Develop internal Lean Manufacturing experts

• Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction by Mark Graban
  

• Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability by John Hunter
  The book provides an overview for viewing management as a system. It is largely based on those of Dr. Deming, along with natural outgrowths or extensions of his ideas such as lean manufacturing and agile software development. To achieve great results there must be a continual focus on achieving results today and building enterprise capacity to maximize results over the long term. Managers have many management concepts, pactices and tools available to help them in this quest. The challenge is to create and continually build and improve a management system for the enterprise that leads to success. The book provides a framework for management thinking. With this framework the practices and tools can be applied to build enterprise capacity and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Management Articles

• Going Lean in Health Care by Jim Womack
  "Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients ? the 'customers' at the heart of it all."

• Robust Experimental Strategies for Improving Upstream Productivity by Ronald D. Snee
  The solution to this problem is to use Lean principles to streamline the processes and procedures used to do the experimental work. Eliminating complexity and wasted time and effort results in experimentation being speeded up and scientists having more time to do creative work.

• Lean accounting: a few key lessons from Wiremold
  "companies often don’t understand lean because their CFOs don’t. ... lean doesn’t need the “support” of top management, whatever that means; it needs active, hands-on “doing” leadership. At Wiremold we used to organize “President’s kaizens” in which all executives participated, together with the workers in one of our facilities. That is more than just support!"

• The Gemba Walk by Norman Bodek
  "the plant manager got up from behind his desk. He asked me to join him on his daily walk; in fact he told me that he walked the plant twice a day every day and that it was the most valuable part of his day... The plant manager asked those questions and you could see the excitement on the face of the supervisor as he was answering the questions. I learned that there’s enormous power in the leader asking questions and then just listening – yes; this is the key to ask the question and then to just listen carefully, not judgmentally."

• 3 Reasons Why Layoffs Don't Benefit Hospitals in the Long Run
  "ThedaCare retrains its employees in a similar fashion to Scripps in that it guarantees to help employees find new employment primarily within the health system or elsewhere, and its emphasis on Lean principles has led to very successful retraining efforts. 'The number of people we've redeployed or retrained has varied from as few as 25 to up to 75 per year,' Dr. Gruner says. 'We would like that to be a higher number, not lower, because a higher number means we're doing a better job of identifying waste.'"

• Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle by John Hunter
  "The PDSA cycle is a learning cycle based on experiments. When using the PDSA cycle prediction of the results are important... The plan stage may well take 80% (or even more) of the effort on the first turn of the PDSA cycle in a new series. The Do stage may well take 80% of of the time - it usually doesn't take much effort (to just collect a bit of extra data) but it may take time for that data to be ready to collect."

• Standardized Work is a Goal To Work Toward, Not a Tool to Implement by Jeffrey Liker
  Standardized work is foundational to the Toyota Production System, yet remains one of the most misunderstood principles to outsiders. It is crucial to understand the true purpose of this foundational practice. Standardized work in the context of the Toyota Way refers to the most efficient and effective combination of people, material, and equipment to perform the work that is presently possible. “Presently possible” means it is today’s best-known way, which can be improved.

• The Promise of Lean in Health Care by John Toussaint
  and Leonard L. Berry, PhD. "When well executed, Lean transforms how an organization works and creates an insatiable quest for improvement. In this article, we define Lean and present 6 principles that constitute the essential dynamic of Lean management: attitude of continuous improvement, value creation, unity of purpose, respect for front-line workers, visual tracking, and flexible regimentation. Health care case studies illustrate each principle. The goal of this article is to provide a template for health care leaders to use in considering the implementation of the Lean management system or in assessing the current state of implementation in their organizations."

• Lean Thinking and Management by John Hunter
  "The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart."

• Ohno’s Problem-Solving Methods by Bob Emiliani, Taiichi Ohno
  "leaders have to respect people and make it safe for people to understand problems and correct them by both trial and error and experiments."

• Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work by John Hunter
  "Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building? ... You don't need to think about empowering people if you have a system that lets people take pride in what they do. If you think you need to empower staff, instead fix the system that requires you to think they are in need of empowerment."

• Resist your machine thinking! by Jeffrey Liker
  "To maintain consistent output, one must continually adjust the system to changing environmental conditions. This is called dynamic homeostasis in systems thinking, or running to stay in place. ... Maintenance comes from having clearly defined standards, observing carefully for deviations from those standards, and then developing and implementing countermeasures to eliminate the deviations."

• Why Lean Programs Fail by Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
  "a large survey conducted by Industry Week in 2007 found that only 2 percent of companies achieved their anticipated results... When we look at lean in this way it is not only a set of techniques for eliminating waste, but a process by which managers as leaders develop people so that desired results can be achieved, again and again. That means coaching people in practicing an improvement kata every day."

• What Lean Really is: The evolution of Toyota's practices by Daniel T. Jones
  "the distinguishing feature of Ohno's approach was to challenge and teach front line and support staff how to design their own work, using the Training Within Industry system pioneered during WWII in the USA (4). This enabled the front line to establish a standard way of doing their work as a base line for improvement, which in turn enabled them to see and respond to any deviations from this standard immediately. In analyzing the root causes of the many issues that interrupted their work he also taught them how to use the scientific approach to solving problems, using Deming's PDCA method. ... Lean shares the same scientific approach to the analysis of work with many improvement methodologies, like BPR, Six Sigma and TQM. But it differs from them in how it is used. Rather than experts using scientific methods to design better systems, lean builds superior performance by developing the problem solving capabilities of the front line, supported by a hands-on management system."

• Adding Customer Value in Development at Xerox
  "Business901 Podcast featured Patrick Waara talking about Xerox’s use of Agile techniques... Our conversation originally was designed to discuss swarming and Lean problem solving. However we ventured off into the subject of how Lean, Six Sigma and Agile all work under the same umbrella"

• A Management, Leadership, and Board Road Map to Transforming Care for Patients by John Toussaint
  "This article offers an alternative approach: management by process—an operating system that engages frontline staff in decisions and imposes standards and processes on the act of managing. Organizations that have adopted management by process have seen quality improve and costs decrease because the people closest to the work are expected to identify problems and solve them. Also detailed are the leadership behaviors required for an organization to successfully implement the management-by-process operating system and the board of trustees’ role in supporting the transformation."

• The Promise of Lean in Health Care by John Toussaint
  "Health care cases reveal that Lean is as applicable in complex knowledge work as it is in assembly-line manufacturing. When well executed, Lean transforms how an organization works and creates an insatiable quest for improvement. In this article, we define Lean and present 6 principles that constitute the essential dynamic of Lean management: attitude of continuous improvement, value creation, unity of purpose, respect for front-line workers, visual tracking, and flexible regimentation. ... Lean is a journey, not a destination. Unlike specific programs, Lean has no finish line. Creating a culture of Lean is to create an insa- tiable appetite for improvement; there is no turning back."

• The Serial Improver
  Profile of Julie McGrory, Head of Continuous Improvement, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, London, UK. "At its heart lean has respect for people and for their ability to solve problems for themselves and their customers. If your strategy allows for that to happen you will be on your way to developing the right culture for your organization."

• Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes The Customer by Jeff Bezos
  "For Bezos a data-driven customer focus lets him take risks to innovate, secure in the belief that he’s doing the right thing. 'We are comfortable planting seeds and waiting for them to grow into trees,' says Bezos. 'We don’t focus on the optics of the next quarter; we focus on what is going to be good for customers. I think this aspect of our culture is rare.'"

• The Lean shut-down of Toyota Manufacturing in Australia by James P. Womack
  Toyota again showed their respect for people and commitment to principles with their shut down of manufacturing in Australia. "Toyota accepted the fact that closure of the plant required a transition to new work for most employees and that Toyota needed to take the lead. Senior management understood that its obligation before producing the last car was to manufacture 2,600 upskilled and reskilled employees equipped for new careers."

• The Principles of the Kanban Method by David Anderson
  Use the 5 Core Properties." 1. Visualize the workflow 2. Limit WIP 3. Manage Flow 4. Make Process Policies Explicit 5. Improve Collaboratively (using models & the scientific method)"

• Zenjidoka - A Simple Tool for a Complex Problem by Norman Bodek
  "Had the tools of the Toyota Production System been extended from the factory floor worker to every employee who makes contact with the customer, Toyota could have dramatically reduced the resulting financial impact and human tragedy. ... Zenjidoka is a new word meaning "Total Jidoka." Instead of confining Jidoka to the factory floor, Zenjidoka extends Jidoka to every employee who has any contact with the end customer."

• Actionable Metrics by John Hunter
  "Metrics are valuable when they are actionable. Think about what will be done if certain results are shown by the data. If you can't think of actions you would take, it may be that metric is not worth tracking."

• Zenjidoka III - Building Excellent People by Norman Bodek
  "Zenjidoka teaches employees (including the dealers) to be self-reliant, empowering them to use every tool and resource at their disposal to immediately investigate and address the customer’s problem... Companies that want to extend quality beyond the factory walls and implement Zenjidoka need to have employees who are skilled enough that they can be trusted with the autonomy to identify and solve customer problems. The development of excellent employees, or Hitozukuri, is necessary to make Zenjidoka work."

• Lean Knowledge Work
  by Bradley Staats and David M. Upton. "our research in IT, financial, engineering, and legal services reveals that such work can in fact benefit from the principles of the Toyota Production System. For one thing, a substantial amount of knowledge assumed to be tacit doesn’t have to be; it can be articulated and captured in writing if the organization makes the effort to pull it out of people’s heads. For another, all knowledge work includes some activities that have nothing to do with applying judgment and can be streamlined by training employees to continually find and root out waste. Even when knowledge is genuinely tacit, creating systems and rules to guide workers’ interactions can lead to more-effective collaboration."

• William Considine embraces Lean Six Sigma to improve Akron Children’s Hospital
  "before it brought out the hammers, it asked members of the department and of the hospital's Lean Six Sigma team to review the problem. Turns out, a simple redesign of the processes and space solved the problem. No space added, no employees added, and $3.5 million saved. ... f your child needed an MRI two years ago, the waiting list at Akron Children’s was about 25 to 28 days. Through discussion with department employees and dissection of the workload, the hospital was able to add 35 MRI tests a week, dropping the wait time to three days or less."

• The Lean Influencer’s Mantra by Siraj Sirajuddin
  Video presentation on leading change to adopt lean thinking.

• Understanding and Application of Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge in Healthcare by Mike Stoecklein
  "The prevailing style of management in healthcare is the same as the style described of Western management by Dr. Deming. It is based on a short-term view, where management sees their job as achieving results by any means necessary. Committees and management batch problems for solving long after the problems have occurred, and the causes are commonly traced back to people. Management spends most of their time in boardrooms or conference rooms without any real understanding of the day-to-day operations, far removed from where the value is added (by the caregivers). Healthcare managers have been led to believe that if they manage the parts of their organization well, then the parts will add up to a well-run organization. This reductionist view may work well for simple systems, but it produces poor quality, high costs, and a lack of cooperation when applied to complex systems like healthcare delivery."

• The Equally Important “Respect for People” Principle by Bob Emiliani
  "The 'Respect for People' principle encompasses all key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Thus, rather than representing a single dyad, the 'Respect for People' principle is a multilateral expression of the need for balanced, mutually respectful relationships, cooperation, and co-prosperity with these key stakeholders."

• Are lean principles universal? by Michael Ballé
  "There is only one golden rule: we make people before we make parts. This requires a spirit of challenge, open mind and teamwork, as Pascal Dennis phrased it in his great lean novel Andy and Me. Every industry is different, but all human beings share the same capabilities and potentials – that is universal. As one Sensei once told me, the biggest room is the room for improvement."

• Profit = Market Price - Actual Cost or Price = Cost + Desired Profit by John Hunter
  "Apple would probably sell very few iPhones for $2,000 more than they cost today. How many they would sell at $100 more or $100 less may change significantly but they would still be huge sellers at either of those prices. So that "market sets the price" idea is not 100% accurate (I don't think anyway). ... Pricing decisions also have big long term versus short term considerations. Apple has started pricing many things in a way which makes it hard for competitors to undercut them. Apple, almost for sure could charge more for the laptops they sell and the iPad and iPhone. But if they did they make it easier for a competitor to compete on price. This pricing decision is an Apple decision not a market decision."

• Treat yourself to the best coach you can find–talking lean management with Michael Ballé by Michael Ballé
  The essential steps of becoming a lean leader are first, to lead from the ground up: to spend a lot of time at the gemba, challenging and listening, teaching problem solving and clearing obstacles for employees, encouraging kaizen and learning from people’s initiatives and creativity in order to align the company’s direction with individual fulfillment. The next step is to accept the learn-by-doing discipline of a pull system. Without the tension of the pull system, real problems won’t appear and people will spend their time kaizening irrelevant issues, essentially learning the wrong things. The third step is to understand the importance of teamwork and to learn how to intensify collaboration. Quality of problem solving is mostly dependent on how intense the collaboration between people from different specialties. The key to lean leadership is a gut feeling understanding that every one wants to understand where the company is going and why, and wants to contribute to that goal if not discouraged by silly policies and petty bosses. So the true aim of lean leadership is to enable every employee to partake in the joy of creation by having suggestions to move the business forward in their own job sphere, and implementing these suggestions themselves.

• Are We "Doing Lean" All Wrong?
  "At this point in a story, everyone wants 'The Big Aha!.' 'Just tell me what things I need to do like Danaher / Wiremold / that small company in Ohio… so I can copy them and get the same results!' Of course that never works or else we’d only have one book about Toyota, but I digress. The Aha for this company was not something they did, but rather something they stopped doing. They stopped striving to “do Lean” by following everyone else’s models of what a Lean company should look like. Instead, they inadvertently ran a series of experiments on how to take good business practices and apply them in ways that meshed with their current culture. This last point is hugely important and addresses a major reason for why Lean fails. People and the organizations they create change incrementally. If we ask too much, too soon, or even ask them too think too deeply, they will not change because the human brain doesn’t know how to make the mental leap."

• TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Art Smalley
  "In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process), as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations to improve quality, cost, productivity, lead-time, safety, morale and other metrics as needed. This clear objective has not substantially changed since the first internal TPS training manual was drafted over thirty years ago."

• Lean Leadership Kaizen is Management by Mark Rosenthal
  "First they tried copying the benchmarked system on a small-scale test to deepen their understanding of what they had studied. Trying it on their parts surfaced differences that weren’t obvious at first, and they learned copying definitely wouldn’t work. Key: The reason they tried to copy was to learn more about it. This was a small-scale concept test, not an attempt at wholesale implementation... So, while an individual improvement task might take longer as people learn, in the end there is a multiplier effect as more and more people get better and better at making improvements. Sadly, it is really impossible to assign an ROI to that, so traditional management doesn’t allow for it..."

• Managing Our Way to Economic Success: Two Untapped Resources by William G. Hunter
  "American organizations could compete much better at home and abroad if they would learn to tap the potential information inherent in all processes and the creativity inherent in all employees."

• How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted by John Hunter
  "Often when learning about Deming’s ideas on management, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, PDSA… people become excited. They discover new ideas that show great promise to alleviate the troubles they have in their workplace and lead them to better results. But how to actually get their organization to adopt the ideas often confounds them..."

• Respect for People by Jim Womack
  "the manager isn’t a morale booster, always saying, 'Great job!' Instead the manager challenges the employees every step of the way, asking for more thought, more facts, and more discussion, when the employees just want to implement their favored solution. Over time I've come to realize that this problem solving process is actually the highest form of respect."

• Respect for People by Art Smalley
  "The fifth item of my list pertains to development of employee talent over time. Respect for people means developing their latent skills in both on the job and off the job training. It is easy to invest money in new technology, software, or equipment. It takes time, effort, and planning to invest in employee skills development. Canned training programs and Powerpoint slide presentations do not do the job."

• Operational Excellence: From Fragmented Vocation to Principle-Driven Profession by Steven Spear
  "Be it lean, six sigma, lean six sigma, business process excellence, reengineering, or TPS, the common objective is creating substantial and sustainable competitive advantage by managing the internal operations of organizations—across the spectrum of development, design, and delivery—to create exceptional differentials in performance across the dimensions of quality, cost, reliability, responsiveness, security, and agility."

• How Do We Know What We Know? - Deming's SoPK Part IV by John Hunter
  "If we can break from such beliefs that are not useful in modern organizations, we can improve our decisions. Having a Deming-based theory of knowledge will help us break from those beliefs and it will help us be more thoughtful as we learn to question other management beliefs we hold (many of which simply are not useful - or cause harm). Understanding the theory of knowledge within the context of the Deming's System for Managing helps us more effectively and consistently learn and improve the processes and systems we work with. "

Management Web Sites and Resources

• Full Speed Ahead by Karn Bulsuk
  Thailand based blog with a focus on the Toyota way.

• Lean Edge by Michael Ballé, H. Thomas Johnson, Daniel T. Jones, Art Smalley, Steven Spear, Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
  "Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners). ... The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."

• Lean HR
  "A discussion of using Lean tools and technology to drive change and streamline processes throughout the HR value stream." by Dwane Lay

• Lean Journey
  "My Lean Journey started about 10 years ago with a career change from R&D to manufacturing. I started this Blog to share lessons along the way and chronicle 'My Lean Journey in the Quest for True North'. With so much emphasis on continuous improvement we often miss the true teaching of TPS (Thinking People System). Lean is a 'Learning' process so sharing your lessons and opinions are welcome."

• Startup Lessons Learned by Eric Ries
  By the author of the very popular book: Lean Startup.

• All About Lean
  

• Got Boondoggle by Mike Wroblewski
  "My lean experiences include learning directly from the original lean leaders including Dr. Shigeo Shingo. As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I believe quality is a cornerstone of all improvement actions. By sharing these experiences and insights, my hope is that you may benefit on your lean journey."

• Lean Impact
  Lean Impact applies Lean Startup principles to nonprofits and the social sector.

• Lean Post
  Articles from the Lean Enterprise Institute including authors: Michael Ballé, Jim Womack and John Shook and many guest authors.

• Toyota Production System
  Site on Toyota.com. "The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called 'jidoka'(which can be loosely translated as 'automation with a human touch') which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of 'Just-in-Time,' in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow."

• John Shook's Column by John Shook
  Articles by John, senior advisor at the Lean Enterprise Institute.

• Benjamin Mitchell's Blog by Benjamin Mitchell
  "I'm a London-based independent consulting focussed on Systems Thinking, Intervention Theory and Lean / Kanban applied to IT businesses. I am a follower of Ohno, Deming, Seddon and Argyris."

• Dave Nave by Dave Nave
  

• Peter Scholtes by Peter R. Scholtes
  Web site of Peter Scholtes, author of The Leader's Handbook (an excellent book) and The Team Handbook. The site offers several excellent management articles. He taught with Deming. Peter was a good friend and his management ideas are well worth studying.

• Daily Kaizen by Lee Fried
  Blog by Lee Fried tracking the journey of a world-class health care system as it continuously improves to serve its members. He works for Group Health Cooperative non-profit care system in Seattle, Washington.

• Shmula by Peter Abilla
  "This blog is my take on technology, business, operations, The Toyota Production System / Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Queueing Theory, operations research, building software, the customer experience (especially ethnography and design thinking and word-of-mouth marketing)"

• Designing Kaizen
  Website for lean management trainer with blog.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Articles by John Hunter
  Hundreds of useful management articles hand selected to help managers improve the performance of their organization. Sorted by topic including: Deming, lean manufacturing, six sigma, continual improvement, innovation, leadership, managing people, software development, psychology and systems thinking.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog by John Hunter
  Blog by John Hunter on many topics to to improve the management of organizations, including: Deming, lean manufacturing, agile software development, evidence based decision making, customer focus, innovation, six sigma, systems thinking, leadership, psychology, ...

• Lean Manufacturing Blog by Mark Graban
  News, articles and podcasts on the the lean manufacturing with a focus on health care by Mark Graban.

• Agile Management Blog by David Anderson
  

• Not Running a Hospital by Paul Levy
  Author is a former hospital CEO and an "advocate for patient-driven care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes, and front-line driven process improvement."

• Lean in Alaska Blog
  

• Markovitz Consulting by Daniel Markovitz
  Blog by Dan Markovitz on lean thinking and how managers can properly allocate their time.

• Beyond Lean
  Blog by industrial engineering with the theme of reflecting on lean management and the idea that business units should be educated on lean thinking and principles.

• Superfactory
  Dedicated to spreading manufacturing and enterprise excellence information with an aim to improve manufacturing efficiency and productivity worldwide.

• Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter by John Hunter, William G. Hunter
  George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.

• Lean Urbanism
  "The Project for Lean Urbanism will restore common sense to the processes of development, building, starting small businesses, community engagement, and acquiring the necessary skills. The Project will devise tools so that community-building takes less time, reduces the resources required for compliance, and frustrates fewer well-intentioned entrepreneurs, by providing ways to work around onerous financial, bureaucratic, and regulatory processes."

• Be More Careful by Mark Graban
  A Collection of workplace signs and posters that don't get to the root cause.

• in2in by Bill Bellows
  Offer an annual conference along with ongoing learning opportunities focused on the management ideas of Deming and Ackoff. I, John Hunter, think this is a good conference.

• Manufacturing Leadership Center by Bill Waddell
  Bill Waddell shares his knowledge, opinions, experience and ideas to point out the failures of companies, organizations, and individuals in the manufacturing industry while also lauding those that understand true excellence.

• Not Running a Hospital by Paul Levy
  Advocate for patient-driven care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes, and front-line driven process improvement.

• Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections by John Hunter
  The aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life. The site provides connections to resources on a wide variety of management topics to help managers improve the performance of their organization. The site was started in 1996 by John Hunter.

• Lean Enterprise Institute by Jim Womack
  "We carefully develop hypotheses about lean thinking and experiment to see which approaches work best in the real world. We then write up and teach what we discover, providing new methods for organizational transformation. We strive to answer the simple question of every manager, "What can I do on Monday morning to make a difference in my organization?" And, by creating a strong Lean Community through our website and public events we try to give managers the courage to become lean change agents."

• Gemba Tales
  Blog by Mark Hamel exploring experiences (some successful, some not) of the author and other lean practitioners and shared for the purpose of providing insight into the application of lean concepts.

• The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog by John Hunter
  

• Gotta Go Lean by Jeff Hajek
  "The Gotta Go Lean Blog focuses on Lean at the front line. We help managers and employees work together to make Lean more productive for the company, and jobs more satisfying for workers."

• Curious Cat Management Comments by John Hunter
  Blog by John Hunter - currently used mainly to collect comments made on other blog posts in one place.

• Jamie Flinchbaugh by Jamie Flinchbaugh
  Blog on lean culture, transformational leadership, and entrepreneurial excellence. Jamie is a consultant and co-author of The Hitchhiker.s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road.

• System Thinking and Lean for Services
  

• Gemba Academy Blog by Jon Miller
  Great blog on lean manufacturing topics by Jon Miller and others.