Customer Reviews

Kaikaku: The Power and Magic of Lean

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I am a Lean Practioner and 6 Sigma Black Belt. The advertisement for the book lead me to beleive that it was something different. I enjoyed and learned from the book.

What the book was to me is a personal history of the introduction of lean to the US. Mr. Bodek was a key and instrumental force in doing so. From that perspective the book fills in a lot of gaps of how things happened and who played what role. The book also gives a great overview of what Lean (Toyota Production System, TPS) is and how it is applied, and who the key players were/are and an insight to their personalities.

The book is not a detailed examination of the production system. If you are looking for that, Mr. Bodek gives references to other books published by his company translated from the original Japanese. This gives you insight to those works and which to chose from. This, in and of itself, is worth the price of this book.

The book does cover the major topics of the TPS and gives plenty of examples and implementation stories. The stories are great in themsleves, and a great insight to the way of Japanese management. Mr. Bodek is a strong proponent of that style. It also goes into some biographies of the key players in the process. It hits on Demings' and Juran's impact in Japan.

The war stories of the industrial touring trips to Japan were interesting. The problems faced by jumping in to the publishing opportunities to present the original works to a new audience were facinating business stories.

The biggest AHA moment for me was the discussion on Quick and Easy Kaizen, or the Japanese implementation of a sugggestion system. Radically different from any I've seen in the US outside of Honda and Toyota.

If your looking for a fast easy read on the history of bringing Lean to the US and the key underpinnings of the process to include a good description of the key components with annecdotes, this is the book for you. If your looking to understand lean and find other references of use to you, this is the book for you. If your insterested in filling in some knowledge gaps of how and why some things happened, again, this is for you. If your looking for specific action items to implement specific components, go elsewhere, or use this book as a guide.

Norman Bodek is a master and genius when it comes to sharing information about Lean Manufacturing. I just finished reading Kaikaku and must praise and congratulate Norman for his vision to have seen the potential in Japan and the people in Toyota all those years ago. Norman truly is an inspiration and unsung hero of modern manufacturing and this book shares some great personal experiences with the original creators of Lean in Japan such as Ohno and Shingo, to name just two.

This account of his experiences and the wisdom shared within the book (Kaikaku) will benefit the many people and companies who are attempting to get to grips with the lean tranformation process all over the world. This book has unveiled many of the mysteries surrounding the original creators of Lean and shows how basic common sense and simple thinking by everyone can create miraclulous results in any company.

May those who seek the truth and simplicity of the Toyota Production System be inspired with the knowledge shared in this marvelous book.

Tony Corrigan

I don't know why my original review disappeared, but it had gotten 1 useful vote.

I got this book after having read lots of books published by Mr. Bodek's Productivity Press. Although this book was not what I expected, I still found it to be an enjoyable, autobiographical narrative. The sections dealing with an eccentric Shigeo Shingo were the best. Kaikaku is not a book that tells you how to turn your company around; it is an informal, easy-going history of how Norman brought Ohno and Shingo to the US.

However, the poor production values (sloppy edits, inexplicable font changes, missed changes between block quote and normal text) were distracting. My warning to readers is that if this is the first book you ever read by Mr. Bodek, don't use this to judge the quality of other products put out by his former employer, Productivity Press.

This is an excellent book for those looking for a history and overview of the evolution of Lean Manufacturing. Unfortunately the book is so riddled with grammatical and spelling errors that it is distracting. Please don't judge the other books he has brought to us by this one. Norm Bodek is the guy who got all of those great Japanese management books translated to English, and those that I have read, such as JIT is Flow and 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace, are excellent.

This is the story of how Norman Bodek met and what he learned from the great manufacturing masters of the past twenty-five years. Norman shares his adventures with Ohno, Shingo, Akao, Nakajima, Deming, Juran, Crosby, and others. It's the next best thing to meeting these men in person.

A must read for the serious lean practitioner.

Mark Edmondson, President, LEAN Affiliates
www.leanaffiliates.com

Kaikaku, the power and magic of lean is an extraordinary book full of history, storytelling and inspiration. Of the many things I learned from this book, I will touch on a few learning's that I feel had the biggest impact on me. My favorite `ah ha' moment came from the chapter titled, `My Mental Transformation' regarding the importance of quality.(111) I enjoyed learning about quality control from the perspective of Dr. Armand V. Feigenbaum who strove to move away from a focus on technical methods of quality control to quality control as a business method. The idea of viewing quality from an administrative point of view and taking into account human relations as an issue in quality control activities was a shift in focus that I found refreshing and profound. People play a key role in implementing quality control as well as JIT and lean systems and I feel this book in general and this chapter in particular did a beautiful job emphasizing this point.

Another key lesson that I took away from the book is the importance of making mistakes. This message is repeated many times throughout the book, often as narrative from one of Normans many life adventures. We learn from our mistakes and should not be ashamed or embarrassed by them, rather we have the ability to turn our mistakes into opportunities to learn and opportunities to share our learning with others. One of my favorite antidotes on this topic revolved around Norman hosting Mr. Shingo at a conference and eating his banana before a big presentation where Mr. Shingo intended on using it. It was a great story.

The book also emphasized the idea that employees are a valuable asset that are underutilized in many organizations. One example of the power behind this idea was Illustrated in the chapter, `Quick and Easy Kaizen' where Claudia Washington, an employee at Technicolor Corporation devised a bubble wrap fixture that hung from the ceiling that allowed her to pack boxes without having to constantly bend down and reach for the bubble wrap.(266) Another important lesson in the book that left a lasting impression on me was the idea that you don't have to tell people exactly what to do. This point was reiterated throughout the book with countless examples of factory employees who when faced with a task, took it upon themselves to figure out how to meet company goals without being told the details how.

Kaikaku is an absolute lean library must have. Mr. Norman Bodek delivers the genetic core of lean concepts and the people that made them real with his book Kaikaku - The Power and Magic of Lean. If there has ever been a `fill in the blanks' book for the who, what, why, when and how of lean, this is it!

I have walked away from this book with a much better understanding (and appreciation) of why embracing the Toyota Production System is critical to the future of any manufacturing facility.

Mr. Bodek's delightful tell-it-like-it-is style makes Kaikaku truly an enjoyable read. Kaikaku is undoubtedly a great resource for those seeking to become knowledgeable in lean principles.