The benefits of applying TQM in manufacturing are well-known: eliminating product defects, enhancing product design, speeding delivery, and reducing costs. Most people readily agree with the basic premise of TQM, but how many have have been able to implement it successfully? What makes it so difficult for TQM to permeate a company? How can an approach to corporate management first develop in Japan take root and flourish in the very different corporate climate of the U.S.?

In Four Practical Revolutions in Management: Systems for Creating Unique Organizational Capability, authors Shoji Shiba and David Walden significantly revise their classic text on leading management systems -- A New American TQM. This book is a comprehensive approach to business management that goes beyond business operations improvement. The authors demonstrate a program for establishing a sophisticated, state-of-the-art management system that creates unique organizational capabilities. Containing new methodologies and case studies, the book is one of the most extensive in the management field and provides a step-by-step program for implementing leading management techniques. To create a successful management system, the authors argue that companies must be organized around four major areas of practice called the "four revolutions." They are customer focus, continuous improvement, total participation, and societal networking. For each of the areas, the book presents proven methods that enable dynamic implementation strategies. Customer Focus Any effective management system begins with the customer. Companies must learn to integrate a customer's concerns into their own. The book presents how to embrace the "market-in" concept and integrate the other skills in the book into a management strategy that focuses on the customer. Continuous Improvement For a company to be successful in the 21st century, it must continually improve its processes to meet the ever-changing needs of the customer. This book introduces important tools for process discovery, management, and improvement. In the process, it moves beyond "reactive improvement" methods to "proactive improvement" efforts. Total Participation The key to creating a dynamic management system is employee participation. Employees are the ones who work on the issues of quality and customer satisfaction on a daily basis. This book presents skills such as hoshin management, team-building, creating structures for mobilization, and leading change and breakthrough. Societal Networking Besides a company's internal audience, another source of business improvement ideas is societal networking. This is the set of companies, customers, and suppliers associated with any organization, that can learn from the experiences of these groups. To develop these valuable resources into a comprehensive management strategy, the book covers "mutual learning" methods, as well as keys for integrating various management methodologies. This book includes: Hoshin management PDCA (plan, do, check, act) cycle 7-step method of reactive improvement Proactive improvement to develop new products Engaging people in a changing environment Focused strategies for phase-in Leading process improvement The practice of breakthrough Over thirty thorough case studies

The benefits of applying TQM in manufacturing are well-known: eliminating product defects, enhancing product design, speeding delivery, and reducing costs. Most people readily agree with the basic premise of TQM, but how many have have been able to implement it successfully? What makes it so difficult for TQM to permeate a company? How can an approach to corporate management first develop in Japan take root and flourish in the very different corporate climate of the U.S.?

Over the last two decades, Japanese firms have challenged U.S. dominance in many manufacturing industries. This challenge has increasingly come in the form of transplant operations, and recognition has spread that their success owes a great deal to superior manufacturing management. Despite the ups and downs of the business cycle in Japan, there remains a core of world-class Japanese companies that have developed manufacturing management systems that companies throughout the world strive to emulate. In this edited volume, a team of eminent scholars uses case studies and large-scale surveys to explain in depth the process of transferring and transforming the best Japanese Management Systems (JMS) by both Japanese- and U.S.-owned firms. While the most successful of the Japanese manufacturing transplants rely, to varying degrees, on home country management techniques, they have had to adapt them to fit U.S. conditions. Similarly, the growing number of U.S. firms that are adopting these techniques to strengthen their own positions face a considerable challenge in transforming them to fit local conditions. A new environment necessarily compels the transformation of JMS. But despite the hurdles firms face, the evidence presented here and elsewhere strongly indicates that key aspects of JMS are remarkably transferable and successful in the United States. Combining scientific data with clear and engaging prose,Remade in America is a rich analytical resource for manufacturing professionals, as well as scholars and students of management and business.

Shingo, whose work at Toyota provided the foundation for JIT, teaches how to implement non-stock production in your JIT manufacturing operations. The culmination of his extensive writings on efficient production management and continuous improvement, this book is an essential companion volume to his other landmark books on key elements of JIT, including SMED and poka-yoke. It includes: Fundamental flaws in European and American production philosophies. Basic concepts for improving production systems. The "scientific thinking mechanism" -- a new approach to improvement. Implementing a production method in an age of authorized stock production. Development of production functions in the age of non-stock production. Significance of the different production systems.

Quality issues are occupying an increasingly prominent position in today's global business market, with firms seeking to compete on an international level on both price and quality. Consumers are demanding higher quality standards from manufacturers and service providers, while virtually all industrialized nations have instituted quality programs to help indigenous corporations. A proliferation in nation-wide and regional quality awards such as the Baldridge award and certification to ISO 9000 series are making corporations world-wide quality-conscious and eager to implement programs of continuous improvement. To achieve competitiveness, quality practice is a necessity and this book offers an exposition of how quality can be attained. The Handbook of Total Quality Management: Explores in separate chapters new topics such as re-engineering, concurrent engineering, ISO standards, QFD, the Internet, the environment, advanced manufacturing technology and benchmarking Discusses the views of leading quality practitioners such as Derning, Juran, Ishikawa, Crosby and Taguchi throughout the book Considers important strategies for quality improvement, including initiation and performance evaluation through auditing, re-engineering, and process and design innovations. With contributions from 47 authors in 13 different countries, the Handbook of Total Quality Management is invaluable as a reference guide for anyone involved with quality management and deployment, including consultants, practitioners and engineers in the professional sector, and students and lecturers of information systems, management and industrial engineering.

dtPublisher's MessageddIn a time when managers are scrambling to find methods to maneuver through the madness of a completely unpredictable business environment, Jeffrey Goldstein's answers are surprising, challenging, and sometimes controversial. But when applied, they reveal the key to highly refined organization functioning. In The Unshackled Organization, consultant and management professor Jeffrey Goldstein examines new territory with his exploration into how change happens within an organization. Utilizing leading-edge scientific and social theories about change, including non-linear, far-from-equilibrium, chaos theory, and system dynamics, Goldstein shows that only through "self-organization" can natural, lasting change occur. The theory behind "self-organization" arises from the idea of allowing and even amplifying unpredictable fluctuation rather than abolishing or controlling it. In other words, don't fight it! Change imposed from above often is not accepted with open arms by employees. But out of the chaos of change that emerges from within the organization will come long-lasting, structural improvements instead of short-term, Band-Aid solutions. This is a dramatic new way of looking at change, one that means rethinking how change happens within an organization and how you can encourage the process. This book is a pragmatic guide for managers, executives, consultants, and other change agents. More than an academic discourse on a new theory of change, it is filled with real-world examples about diverse types of change in a variety of business and service organizations. This is information you can start using today to support true change within your organization. Contents Publisher's Message Preface Chapter One: New Wine Skins Chapter Two: Growth in Nonlinear Systems Chapter Three: The Dynamics of Self-Organization Chapter Four: From Resistance to Attraction Chapter Five: The Equilibrium Effect of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Chater Six: Generating Far-From-Equilibrium Conditions Chapter Seven: Working With Boundaries Chapter Eight: Differences That Make A Difference Chapter Nine: The Cauldron of Change Chapter Ten: The Magic Theatre Epilogue Notes About the Author Index