Customer Reviews

Lean For Dummies

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the 25 years that I have spent in the manufacturing industry I have read several books on lean and none approach the practical and yet thorough rendition of this intricate and multidimensional concept. It flows in a most logical way and offers the reader salient applications of the concepts while provoking ones own thoughts and ideas. In many ways its style is reminiscent of Deming, in Out of Chaos where the transformation of the enterprise is not some ethereal act of consultants but the dedicated efforts of an enlightened and energized workforce who lives manufacturing day in and day out. Fundamental concepts are clear, excellently explained and highly organized. Lean for Dummies is obviously written by two individuals with truly empirical hands on manufacturing experience for people who vitally desire needed improvements in our hyper competitive world..I am personally so very glad to have this new and refreshing powerful book for use in our business...ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT,INNOVATIVE, AND ENLIGHTENING... WE SHALL USE IT IN OUR FORTUNE 25 FIRM !!! WE STRONGLY SUGGEST A VERSION IN SPANISH AND LOOK FORWARD TO ITS PUBLICATION!

Thank you -

I have had this book for a few weeks now. It provides countless ways to look at what we do in business and apply common sense solutions to the issues we face. For instance, the authors make the clarification between CUSTOMER and CONSUMER. I have often gotten the two confused. There are so many ideas packed into this volume that I cannot read all the way through it in one sitting. I prefer to read a bit, digest it, then apply it. The book explains the origin of LEAN from the Toyota Production System and from many of the US Quality gurus before that.

What is very apparent to readers of the book, is that respect for the fellow worker is a cornerstone of the lean philosophy. This provides a strong foundation on which to build a company. People feel secure to do things more quickly and more economically, thus transforming their company into a well oiled machine capable of taking on more work and selling more product at a higher quality level. The motivation, excitement, and results are apparent. Toyota is currently surpassing the other US automakers in sales and quality. They are not laying off, they are building new plants.

Another outcome is that empowerment occurs to front line employees who are given lean principles and tools to work with.

The authors have extensive experience in manufacturing, scientific work, Six Sigma, Business Process Management, and other process centric topics. This allows them to compare LEAN to the other methodologies that complement it.

I recommend reading this if you are a top executive, a middle manager, or a front line worker. Office workers especially can benefit from process improvements made using lean tools. One huge benefit of LEAN is that it does not require much of a budget. Actually, it creates revenue often by creating new capacity within a company. It works for Profit and Non-Profit entities. (It even works for your home life!)

This is a great initial text on LEAN and an excellent reference as well. Happy Leaning!

This is a useful introduction to the concepts, philosophy, and general approach of Lean. It does not scare people off with formulas, and has very few of them. This is ultimately a negative factor because more technical detail in the right place would have been a helpful bridge toward actually trying to do something with Lean. I think one of the things that comes through if you read the book a couple of times is that lean manufacturing would be very tough to fully adopt at most American companies because it is often at odds with traditional accounting measures and corporate organizational structures--- and one of the original lean priniciples is respect and long-term development for workers, another alien concept.

A big advantage of the "Dummies" series is that the topic becomes more inviting and is read by and hopefully talked about by relatively more people. A lot of fence sitters take this as a step to gain some understanding. And, books like these give some consultants and quality type of guys introduction into buzzwords to show off their knowledge and intelligence (Like I did after reading Wine for Dummies)

That said, I think the book is a very good attempt and explains a lot of core concepts about Lean. It is better read than a lot of books about Lean Manufacturing. It is quite pictorial and easy to read.

Some of the simpler concepts can be directly applied and for folks who work in Quality or Six Sigma teams, it can give them more tools that they can use. But to go into a full scale lean transformation and to adopt the philosophy of lean, a deeper understanding and much more knowledge is needed.
That is not the purpose of this book and therefor deserves a full five stars for the attempt and simple explanation of the terms and concepts.
P.S.: There are a few errors. I found about the funniest of those in a lean blog even before reading the book (both the pillars of TPS house are named Jidoka!)The new editions of the book have the error corrected.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is a helpful overview of the fundamentals of Lean. It takes a couple of questionable liberties with some topics, but overall I highly recommend this book to be on any Lean practioners bookshelf. I also recommend Lean Six Sigma That Works: A Powerful Action Plan for Dramatically Improving Quality, Increasing Speed, And Reducing Waste Another good book to put along side of it.

Lean for Dummies is the best book for your Lean team to use as a reference if gives great information to go back to during kaizen events and value stream mapping events!.

I work for a bunch of clowns who like to like to walk around talking manager-speak but what they say has no substance. They've managed to confuse everyone because they, themselves, are confused about Lean. I can't get any solid answers to my questions and when I ask 5 different people the same question I get 5 different answers! So, I bought this book and WALAH! FINALLY...I now have a clear understanding about Lean. This book, coupled with "The Toyota Way", is making it all come together for me in a clear and concise manner that I can follow easily. I highly recommend Lean For Dummies. It is well-written at a perfect pace and it is full of easy-to-understand examples from our everyday world. Sadly, since the management where I work is worthless, this book serves as my Lean mentor, and it's doing a great job! This book has made it possible for me to move forward with Lean in a determined, decisive and deliberate way, which is how I love to work.

I had been looking for a good introduction to Lean but couldn't find one, not even on the Lean.org site. Lean isn't are hard concept but the japanese jargon makes most books hard to follow. I hate buying a book with "dummies" as the title but this one did the trick. In fact it surpassed my expectations. The authors really seem to know what they are talking about and even though it is dated the text seems to jive well with current writing.

Bought this book as a refresher on Lean. Really did the job well. Nicely organized. Best read over several sittings. Highly recommended.

As a master degree student in engineering who is doing intern in Lean field, I find this book is very helpful for me to learn and understand basic stuffs of lean.