Customer Reviews

Going Lean: How the Best Companies Apply Lean Manufacturing Principles to Shatter Uncertainty, Drive Innovation, and Maximize Profits

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When traditional managers apply traditional methods to chaotic events - Katrina, for example,or steep oil price increases - they get - you guessed it - traditional, disappointing results. Enter Steve Ruffa's approach to lean, as demonstrated by Toyota,Walmart and Southwest Airlines, three notches and two thousand miles above day to day lean operations. Ruffa provides hard answers and clear examples to the questions managers have been struggling with for over 15 years - how to take lean into bigger, crazier, more dangerous environments. Cross a hard aerospace engineer who loves real numbers, with great and flexible lean giants, and what you get is an over-riding lean approach dubbed Lean Dynamics by Shingo Prize winning author Ruffa, that US industries need right now. My only complaint? The title should have been Lean Dynamics.

This Audio CD of the Book "Going Lean" by Stephen Ruffa is a must have for the Lean Practitioner or any one in a leadership postion in the 21st Century who wants to lead their team to excellence.

Ruffa does a great analysis and expands on current (2008) global business culture for multinational corporations in current times. Going Lean brings us up to date on earlier publication by Jim Womack, (The Machine that changed the World, Lean Thinking) and Liker's (The Toyota Way). Ruffa also gives credit and supports the early Lean Pioneers (Henry Ford, Ono, Deming, Peter Drucker and more experts within the recent age of digitalization and globalization.

A good reference source for Business school students at the undergraduate and Graduate School Level.

Going Lean is a must read for both the Lean veterans and those just initiating their Lean journeys. Again, Ruffa successfully provides an excellent book that doesn't just fall into the "same as" type of Lean category. By providing data on organizations across diverse sectors, he shows the far reaching applicability of Lean principles. His "value curve" clearly depicts the separation of the Lean versus the not-quite-so Lean organizations, and Ruffa's work, as usual, is backed by solid research. I highly recommend this book.

Going Lean is a must read for any company that wishes to compete in today's challenging, uncertain business environment. It contains rigorous research, undeniable hard data and assessment of cutting edge projects--along with further exploration of the findings from the unprecedented study of the aerospace and defense industry first revealed in Breaking the Cost Barrier.

Going Lean succeeds in laying out a path to improvement that is as clear as it is compelling--getting past the confusing jargon so prevalent in other improvement regimens--to make reading and understanding these bold new concepts enjoyable.

Companies of all types should consider applying Lean Dynamics. It's a logical, systematic approach to tie together disparate tools employed by managers and workers who have become frustrated by a confusing mix of solutions that often don't seem to work.

Going Lean will be one of the most important reads for managers, corporate executives and investors to prepare for the decade ahead.

People and organizations too often find that the very things they did to prepare for emergencies end up making their problems worse. Stephen A. Ruffa shows you how to use the "lean dynamics" approach to track "lag" within your operations and eliminate it before it harms your competitiveness and makes you less adaptable in a crisis. He explains how to determine where lag is hiding and how to root it out. He offers a solid plan for launching lean dynamics and getting everyone on board. Ruffa also explains how to measure and maximize value within the lean dynamics system, and tells you how to stay ahead of the "value curve." Ruffa writes clearly and illustrates his principles by comparing Toyota and the Detroit automakers, Wal-Mart and Kmart, and Southwest and other major airlines. getAbstract recommends his book to anyone interested in learning about a new approach to business operations.

I believe this book offers a great pile of facts on why some of the production factories go terribly off the road recently.

Thumbs up for the style, precise and covering structure of thought and usage of analogies (which are both entertaining and hitting the bull-eye).

The only bit that takes it from 5 stars super-book is the length of the text. Not too many readers would be patient to go through. I understand that author's mission was to walk the reader through the whole argument and build the castle brick by brick. That is all fine, but sometimes the comments on how bad the actual environment is get repeated and obsolete.
You can slap the actual operational setting into the face at the start very hard with some bolder statements and then promise to answer why the slap was actually well deserved in the text.

And oh yes you can prove the slap with the text in this book!!!

In "Going Lean: How the Best Companies Apply Lean Manufacturing Principles to Shatter Uncertainty, Drive Innovation and Maximize Profits", Steve Ruffa has taken the mathematical insight of an Aerospace engineer and combined it with in-depth analysis of three industry leading companies, Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines and Toyota to bring us the concept of Lean Dynamics.
In this time of changing business conditions "Lean Dynamics" can be used to survive, thrive and grow.
The industrial countryside is littered with companies that have started Lean programs just to find sustainability too elusive. This book answers the questions of dealing with lag, how to create a steady and predictable flow in a customer driven supply chain and how to apply the lean dynamic tool to measure sustainability in changing business climates.
By showing us the mistakes of some of the early industrial leaders Mr. Ruffa leads the reader through steps on how not to repeat them. Including the wisdom of Ducker and Deming with the successful systems of Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines and Toyota we find things everyone can learn from past and present Lean Leaders.
This Book is a must read for all Industry and Government leaders in this turbulent time.

IMHO this book lacks depth. The author constantly refers to the impetus for change, but no clear framework is given. The reader feels a sense of urgency without any guidance.

True, the author did his research and contemporary examples for WalMart, Toyota and others are sprinkled throughout the book. However, no unified theory is every provided. Yes, change is required, and yes it must be company wide... but now what?