A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance [Paperback]

Daniel Markovitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 13, 2011 | ISBN-10: 1439859930 | ISBN-13: 978-1439859933 | Edition: 1

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 new book, A Factory of One.

Part One — Part Two

View the book's website at www.afactoryofone.com.

View the author’s website at www.timebackmanagement.com.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Dan Markovitz brings a thoughtful and supremely practical perspective to the fundamental scarcity faced by us all: time. His approach blends conceptual frameworks and concrete specifics—a powerful and useful combination—to reduce the noise and clutter in our lives and work. Markovitz can help us all to be more effective!
—Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last and Great by Choice

No matter what your role is in your company, or whether you're an independent consultant or even unemployed, you will love Dan Markovitz's new book, A Factory of One. This gem will improve even the most efficient person's work life in powerful ways. The introduction alone got me motivated to adopt those practices that he writes and aren't yet part of my standard work. ... It's short, sweet, and to the point. You're never left wanting more, but you never wish the author would get on with it. ... relates powerful Lean manufacturing tools such as visual management, flow, pull, 5S, and kaizen to daily work, revealing how they improve efficiency, reduce waste, and link the individual worker ever more closely to customer value. This practice helps business professionals develop greater self-awareness, more disciplined problem-solving skills, and a heightened ability to self-correct errors.Read Dan's book--and then apply the tips he gives.
—Karen Martin, Principal, Karen Martin & Associates; and keynote speaker, ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference 2012

About the Author

Daniel Markovitz is president of TimeBack Management (www.timebackmanagement.com), a consulting firm that radically improves individual and team performance by identifying and eliminating root cause impediments to productivity. He is a faculty member at the Lean Enterprise Institute and teaches at the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program. He also leads a problem solving workshop at the Ohio State University’s Fisher School of Business.

Dan lived in Japan for four years and is fluent in Japanese. He’s also an avid distance runner, an enthusiastic (but somewhat tentative) cyclist, and a determined (if slow) swimmer. He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. You can reach him at [e-mail] or via Twitter @timeback.

Product Details

• Paperback: 177 pages
• Publisher: Productivity Press; 1 edition (December 13, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439859930
• ISBN-13: 978-1439859933
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Industrial Relations
  • #51 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Quality Control

More About the Author

Dan is the founder and owner of TimeBack Management, a consultancy specializing in improving individual and organizational performance through the application of lean concepts.

Although he's lost much of his hair by now (punishment for looking like a hippie in the '70s) he's fortunate to still be devilishly handsome. . . and married to a woman who's okay with male pattern baldness.

Dan splits his time monthly between a small town just north of San Francisco and Manhattan. Sadly, his cat Pixel isn't able to travel with him.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How to focus on "HOW" I work. December 26, 2011

By Jason W. Womack

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Traditional Work: How you work is probably how you worked.

When I looked at that line in my notebook (after reading Daniel Markowitz's book, A Factory of One) I thought about the busy-ness that many people talk about as they relate to their workday. As you consider what you get done in a typical 8 or 10 or 15-hour shift, do you stop to consider HOW you get that work done?

Over the 145 pages of this well-written - and well-documented - book Dan shows very specific methods you can use to apply "Lean Principles" (traditionally reserved for manufacturing and production lines to remove wasted movements thereby increasing overall productivity) to the "Knowledge Work" that keeps so many of us busy and focused on working overtime.

I was pleased to see Dan write about Parkinson's Law of work: Namely, that the work you have will generally fill the time you have available to do that work. If something is due in a week, it'll take about a week. If it's due later today, well you get the point.

The point of applying Lean Principles to improve personal performance is two-fold:

1. Create a flow of working: so that once you get there, you stay there and produce something (a thought, a product, etc) of value
2. Reduce the stress of wasted movements to focus on more meaningful activity

If you're thinking of getting this book, here's just one of the themes you can expect to explore while you're reading:

Dan asks you to define your "value;" the value of your service or product to the market. Once you've identified that value, then you can work on making things as efficient as possible in order to make that value available to those that matter: clients, community, organization, family, friends, etc.... Oh, it might be helpful to know how Dan defines value. I'm walking away with three indicators:

What does the customer pay for?
What are you doing to transform the product or the service?
What activity seems to be done "correctly?"

Of course, you'll walk away from reading this with your own ideas of what "value" means to you, your business, your work. I loved this prompt, though, as it made me think a bit longer about all those "extra to-dos" that have piled up around my own work station lately:

"Should you do better what doesn't deserve doing in the first place?"

Consider what you do, as an entrepreneur, manager, associate of the business you're in. What are the specific activities that you "do" that provide value? The ideas that Dan gives you on (a) how to think about those activities and (b) what to do to make those activities as efficient as possible may be exactly what you need to take not just what you do but HOW you do it to the next level. Imagine being MORE productive without having to buy new technology, hire more staff or change (radically) your business or product.

What WILL you have to change? Your approach to work. To get you think about what that might look, sound and feel like, identify very specifically WHERE your time goes:

fixing
delegating
waiting
over-doing
reviewing
re-doing
explaining
etc

Once you identify WHERE your time, energy and focus is "spent" during the day, then it's time to apply Lean Principles to YOUR work. I hope you enjoy reading (and thinking about) this book as much as I did! Read more ›

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How do you handle inputs into your life? Do you process them effectively and efficiently? January 9, 2012

By Joseph Dager

Format:Paperback

These concepts will be very familiar to people familiar with continuous improvement and more specifically Lean and Six Sigma. However, you do not have to be a practitioner to understand or read the book. When trade terms are used they are explained in simple everyday language without losing a beat. The author demonstrates an in depth knowledge of the Lean Principles. There may be others with his depth of knowledge but I have seen few transfer it into such simple, practical and useable terms. I found myself reading a "how to" book like a novel, reminding myself more than once to bend a corner or mark a page for future reference.

My favorite part of the book was the part on living in your calendar versus your inbox. Quick look at your screen and see what is open! That comment in itself added more than a few minutes to my day of productivity. Another example is his description of a personal A3 for problem solving was absolutely flawless in its description and the use of it.

Are you going to get 2 hours a day of time saving tips from the book? I doubt it. What you will get is more productivity and feeling better about what and how you accomplished it. It was my New Year's Day read and I have picked it up every day since then. Not saying you won't be able to put it down but at this point it looks that way for me.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Helpful Book November 13, 2012

By Brian Maskell

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I read Factory of One when it first came out and I was intrigued and impressed by it. I decided to try it out. And it works - most of it. I was already accustomed to 5S in the office; maybe not that good at it, but accustomed. The "Spotting the Waste" chapter gave me some useful tips. I started creating an index to the handwritten notebook I use everyday. I moved the current customers and current prospect folders on my PC to the top of my hard drive directory. I subsequently moved them to the cloud so I can access them on iPads and phones. Both these little things have saved me a few minute each day ..... and it all adds up.

Chapter 3 about Flow. I have worked on the 4D (when work comes it, either Do, Delegate, Designate, or Discard). I have not mastered this yet , but it has improved the way I work. Especially with emails. I have now set times each day for emails and do not constantly review them. It was quite freeing to realize that emails are not urgent. I have had success (when I am in the office) with setting aside chunks of time for particular tasks and sticking with it (mostly). I have set up checklists for routine yet troublesome tasks. The most successful for me - a constant traveller - has been a checklist of packing for a trip. Another has been my weekly review of billings.

Visual management has been the most useful thing I learned from the book. I have used visual management for many years in one form or another, and I have worked with many manufacturers helping them to introduce visual management. But I had never thought about applying this to my own work. Typical consultant, some people a saying!! When I was in the office I posted my work visually, but when I am on the road or working with customers I had the old fashioned MS Outlook todo list....

It took me a while to figure it out and I went through several steps to get there. I started with mimicking the board on page 106, but using an 11x17 sheet and small post-it's. I then developed an elaborate mindmap on the iPad. Then I moved to a slim, pocket sized note book with even smaller post-it's. All these worked well because I use the principles; visualize the backlog, limit the WIP, designate times. I expect that I will keep refining this, but I am very happy with the way it works.

I recommend this book highly, because the methods and ideas work and have helped to make me more productive and - more importantly - a little less frantic. Go buy this book. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book on increasing your personal productivity through the use of Lean principles February 23, 2012

By Alain B. Burrese TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance" by Daniel Markovitz is an interesting and new look at an old topic, productivity improvement. I'm not sure there was much "new" here, but rather some solid concepts presented in a different manner. I liked the book, and feel is deserves a place among the productivity and business books that line the shelves.

It's just under 150 pages long, which makes it a quick read. It's well organized and flows from topic to topic, providing solid advice on improving personal performance and productivity through the use of Lean principles originally designed to help Toyota factories outperform their competition. Thus, the title, "A Factory of One."

Using this Lean Thinking model, Markovitz addresses the topics of What's Your Job; Spotting Value, Spotting Waste; Flow; Visual Management; and From Bad to Good, and From Good to Great. All of these are important.

I liked the concept of gemba, in the chapter on defining what your job is. I think it is very important to determine what you should be doing that creates value vs. the incidentals and wasteful things that sometimes occupy our time. This chapter does a good job of getting you to look at that. The chapter on spotting value and waste introduces a 5S model which is okay for looking at how you are doing things. There are many of these kinds of models and this is no better or worse than the others. The key is to actually use a system and prevent your office from looking like the picture of Al Gore's office used in the book for illustrative purposes.

The author uses 4Ds to help process work and make it flow. Again, this will work if you actually use it.... I did like the part about multitasking, but again, this is not really new. A number of books these last few years have looked at how inefficient multitasking is, but the other's take on the topic is good and I hope people listen. The chapter on visual management provided some good ideas for making one's tasks easier, more streamlined. This is probably something I had not thought to use outside of places such as the garage, but I see now how the concept and idea can be expanded to other areas.

And of course there is a bit on kaizen, the Japanese term for continuous improvement. Much has been written about this, but the section in this book is well done with some of the basics.

Bottom line, "A Factory of One" is a short, direct, and good book on increasing your personal productivity through the use of Lean principles. If you need a little boost in this area, give it a read and try out the principles. You're bound to increase your personal performance.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of the "Tough Guy Wisdom" series and others. Read more ›