The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (Dearborn, Mich.) has published The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road (SME, 2005, $30). The book shares lessons learned from real applications and results of authors Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino, founders and partners of the Lean Learning Center in Novi, Mich.
“This book will help you learn lean, taking you through everything from lean principles to pitfalls to avoid. Creating change, particularly the kind discussed in this book, is a war. It is a war to win the minds and hearts of people and lead them where you want to go,” said Dennis Pawley, a contributor to the book.
One of the book’s lessons is that lean leaders add value by changing things, moving them forward, and producing different results than the day before. To lead, managers must go beyond creating a vision. They must develop the vehicle that will deliver it. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean will reportedly help managers move beyond the tools and take lean to a self-sustaining and continuously improving level.
The book's 10 chapters cover lean principles and thinking, lean leadership, the roadmap for lean transformation, common pitfalls of lean journeys, building an operating system, lean accounting, lean material management, lean in service organizations, and how individuals can apply lean to improve themselves. The book concludes with interviews with a number of lean practitioners.
Source: SME.