Many businesses say that lean failed to meet their long-term objectives and that the improvements it brought about were only temporary. When businesses utilize lean as a toolkit, copying and pasting the methodologies without trying to adapt the employee culture, manage the improvement process, maintain the outcomes, and grow their leaders, 7 out of every 10 lean projects fail. The primary objective when the Toyota production method was developed was to eliminate wastes from the shop floor by utilizing some lean techniques and technologies. What wasn't made obvious was that Toyota would need to invest heavily in personnel development and training throughout a protracted leadership development process. An issue with management and leadership, as well as an incorrect understanding of human behavior and the necessary culture for success, is the failure to achieve and sustain improvement.

Updated with new information, illustrations, and leadership tools, Leading the Lean Enterprise Transformation, Second Edition describes how the metrics used by Toyota drive every line item in a financial statement in the right direction. Rather than focus on Lean tools and principles, the new edition of this bestselling reference focuses on what may be the least understood and most critical aspect of a Lean transformation: the building of a Lean culture. In addition to new appendices with background information and insightful stories on Lean leadership and implementation, it includes new information on tactical organization practices, strategy deployment, and Lean culture. An inductee to IndustryWeek's Hall of Fame, George Koenigsaecker illustrates successful strategies and valuable lessons learned with case histories of U.S. leaders who have been instrumental in bringing Lean to the forefront. He explains the use of value stream analysis at the leadership level and describes how to structure kaizen events that can improve the value stream. Organized in the chronological sequence that a leader embarking on a Lean journey would experience, the book discusses the methods used by the author during the Hon Company’s successful Lean conversion, which doubled productivity, tripled revenues, and led IndustryWeek to recognize Hon as one of the "World’s 100 Best Managed Firms." The book not only introduces powerful leadership tools—including strategy deployment, transformation value stream analysis, and transformation plan of care—but also arms potential change agents with the soft skills needed to define, develop, and communicate their vision. Detailing the steps required to sustain improvements, it supplies time-tested guidance for effective leadership throughout a Lean transformation in any organization.

Takt time is calculated as the amount of manufacturing time that is available divided by the volume of orders. In the 1930s, the German aviation industry employed Takt for the first time as a production management tool. The idea was widely used within Toyota in the 1950s, and by the late 1960s, it had been adopted by the majority of the Toyota supplier base. Every month, Toyota assesses the takt for a process, with a modifying review occurring every 10 days. Takt time is used to properly balance supply and demand. It gives a lean production system its beating heart.

Known worldwide in manufacturing among those striving to maximize productivity and create pull scheduling of production as "the yellow book," this is the premier how to book for companies going lean. Touted by experts everywhere as practical, down-to-earth, and easy to read, it warns of cultural issues that are certain to arise, and gives step by step instructions for making the transformation. It clearly explains such tools as continuous flow, value stream mapping, kanban, kaizen, six sigma, just-in-time (JIT), techniques for quick set-ups, and other pillars of the Toyota Production System. It's full of examples of value stream mapping, how kanban can resolve material supply issues, how kaizen brainstorming can result in startling improvements overnight, how just-in-me (JIT) frees mountains of money tied up in work-in-progress, why Six Sigma quality needs to be built in and not inspected in, how bottlenecks can be eliminated, kanban snafus spotted before they happen, and how instilling a championship mentality in cross-functional teams an lead to increased productivity and continuous improvement that doesn't stop after the initial kaizen event.

This book enables enterprise business leaders - from CEOs to supervisors - to understand what "Continuous Improvement" is, why it is probably the best answer to improved business performance in years, and how to put it to work in the unique environment of a specific organization. The book examines what is at the core of "Continuous Improvement" and delves deeper into the elements and constituents necessary to take an organization to the next level to ensure its continued, long-term existence. It provides guidance to enterprise management and to professionals engaged in the implementation of a "Continuous Improvement" initiative and enables them to structure and manage its implementation successfully. It also provides tools to quickly assess where an enterprise business stands in terms of strategic management and "Continuous Improvement".​

Continuous improvement, also called "Kaizen," means always trying to make things better. It involves making small, gradual changes to processes, systems, and activities in order to keep improving them over time. The aim of getting better constantly is to get rid of unnecessary things and make things go smoother, be better, and make customers happier. Many people wrongly believe that plan-do-check-act (PDCA) is a cycle for improving things without considering the involvement of people. PDCA strives to make process better, but if you only make the process better without developing and teaching your people, you risk the process regressing. People need to learn and understand how to continuously improve things so they can continue to manage the process using the new method.

Lean healthcare is the practise of applying "lean" concepts to the healthcare industry in order to reduce waste, enhance patient outcomes, and lower costs. All employees of the firm, from clinicians to operations and administrative personnel, continuously work to identify areas of waste and eliminate anything that does not create value for patients using lean concepts in healthcare. In general, lean thinking is a set of concepts, strategies, principles, values and tools used to create and deliver the most value from the customer perspective while consuming the fewest resources and fully utilizing the knowledge and skills of people performing the work. If you visit Toyota assembly plants you can see how Toyota has put all the systems and supports staff in place to ensure that the production team members on the assembly line always have the parts and the necessary tools, they need to do their jobs. Trucks are not as important as patients, but Toyota arguably puts far more effort into supporting their front-line staff than many hospitals do. Toyota allows the team members to focus on their work and the truck in front of them, leading to better results and satisfaction for all.