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Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together

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Publisher: Free Press
List Price: $30.00
Our Price: $6.90
You Save: $ 23.10 ( 77% )
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A massive disconnect exists between consumers and providers today. Consumers have a greater selection of higher quality goods to choose from and can obtain these items from a growing number of sources. Computers, cars, and even big-box retail sites promise to solve our every need. So why aren't consumers any happier? Because everything surrounding the process of obtaining and using all these products causes us frustration and disappointment. Why is it that, when our computers or our cell phones fail to satisfy our needs, virtually every interaction with help lines, support centers, or any organization providing service is marked with wasted time and extra hassle? And who among us hasn't spent countless hours in the waiting room at the doctor's office, or driven away from the mechanic only to have the "fix engine" light go on?

In their bestselling business classic Lean Thinking, James Womack and Daniel Jones introduced the world to the principles of lean production -- principles for eliminating waste during production. Now, in Lean Solutions, the authors establish the groundbreaking principles of lean consumption, showing companies how to eliminate inefficiency during consumption.

The problem is neither that companies don't care nor that the people trying to fix our broken products are inept. Rather, it's that few companies today see consumption as a process -- a series of linked goods and services, all of which must occur seamlessly for the consumer to be satisfied. Buying a home computer, for example, involves researching, purchasing, integrating, maintaining, upgrading, and, ultimately, replacing it.

In this landmark new book, James Womack and Daniel Jones deconstruct this broken producer-consumer model and show businesses how to repair it. Across all industries, companies that apply the principles of lean consumption will learn how to provide the full value consumers desire from products without wasting time or effort -- theirs or the consumers' -- and as a result these companies will be more profitable and competitive.

Lean Solutions is full of surprising success stories: Fujitsu, a leading service company for technology, has transformed the way call centers solve problems -- learning how to eliminate the underlying cause of current problems rather than fixing them again and again. An extremely successful car dealership has adopted lean principles to streamline its business, making for dramatically reduced wait time, fewer return trips, and greater satisfaction for customers -- and a far more lucrative enterprise.

Lean Solutions will inspire managers to take the first steps toward perfecting their company's process of giving consumers what they really want.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.812
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2005-10-04
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
• The Toyota Way
• The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Lean Solutions
Comment: Interesting, but not innovative. By now everyone knows that the customer must be the focus of any activity. The whole book suffers of lack of imagination, it keeps focusing on automotive industry and related services, as if there is nothing else in the world.

Customer Rating:
Summary: I was dissappointed
Comment: I was expecting real life, in depth case studies. Instead I got a rather simplistic view of lean. A lot of the content in the book is real common sense. There is no doubt that lean processes are a must for the company. The book tends to spend 3/4 of its time trying to make that statement, with some high level strategic content thrown about.

If you are expecting content such as how companies do VSM, and tactical challenges in doing VSMs you are reading the wrong book. But if you are interested in knowing what is a VSM, and high level overview of how VSMs are done, then this may be the book for you. ***DONT EXPECT TO BE IN A POSITION OF LEADING A LEAN INITIATIVE AFTER READING THIS BOOK***

Good book for getting introduced to lean concepts. Not much for those looking beyond concepts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lean Provision for Customer Service
Comment: The authors of "Lean Thinking" move their attention from lean production to "lean provision", particularly focussing on retail and services. The book makes a number of excellent arguments in a beautifully clear and readable style. The provision of goods and services to consumers is definitely the next target in the lean revolution and the authors note some particular example organisations that are achieving lean in the service sector. Tesco comes in for frequent praise.

The book does have a couple of weaknesses. Firstly, the books lacks detail on the metholodogy for achieving lean provision. Only a few vague pages are presented.

Secondly, the book would, in my view, really benefit from the input of retail experts and academics to comment on and improve the ideas that are floated by the authors. As it is, I am left with the feeling that some of these ideas are pie in the sky which would never work in the real economy.

Clearly the aim of this book is to stimulate thought and discussion on the application of lean principles to consumer service. It presents a compulsive argument for change, though no clearly worked through solutions. It moves the lean management focus onto the provision of goods and services to the consumer - where it is much needed - and, as such, is required reading for anyone involved in retail and customer service.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Certain to become a business "classic"
Comment:
It is desirable but not necessary to have already read Womack and Jones's previously published Lean Thinking before reading this volume. In both, their focus is on "five simple principles" which can guide and inform any organization's efforts to achieve "process brilliance" in its product development, supplier management, customer support, and production processes. The principles are:

1. Provide the value actually desired by customers.

2. Identify the value stream for each product or service.

3. Get and keep each step of the value stream in proper alignment.

4. Enable the customer to "pull" rather than "push" maximum value from what you offer.

5. Once the value, value stream, flow, and pull are established, "start over from the beginning in an endless search for perfection, the happy situation of perfect value provided with zero waste."

In this context, I am reminded of Albert Einstein's emphasis on making everything as simple as possible...but no simpler. Lean initiatives should eliminate "fat" but not "muscle." Decision-makers in many organizations confuse rightsizing with downsizing.

In Lean Solutions, Womack and Jones identify what they characterize as "the emerging challenges of consumption" despite the availability of better, cheaper products." And this seems very strange when we stop to consider that satisfying consumption - not just making brilliant products - is the whole point of lean production." In response to challenges such as complicated purchase decisions because "consumers are often drowning in a sea of choices," they explain how to combine truly lean provision with truly lean consumption. In process, Womack and Jones examine dozens of real-world examples of how various organizations have done so. When emerges is a new definition of value for today's consumer who insists that problems are solved completely, conveniently and without any waste of time. Moreover, today's consumer expects to receive exactly what she or he or wants, with value delivered where and when specified, with a substantial reduction of decisions which must be made to solve the given problem or fill the given need.

"Our objective is simple: We aim to teach managers to see all the steps a consumer must perform to research, obtain, install, integrate, maintain, repair, upgrade, and recycle the goods and services needed to solve their problem. We then challenge each step, asking why it is necessary at all and why it often can't be performed properly. Once worthless steps are eliminated, we can talk about flow and pull, heading toward perfection." Womack and Jones insist - and I wholly agree - that lean thinking must not only guide and inform continuous efforts to perfect production of a given product or service but to perfect, also, the provision and consumption of it. To the best of my knowledge, their book is the first to provide the core concepts, strategies, and tactics to accomplish that.

True, Womack and Jones suggest and explain a number of "lean solutions" to all manner of problems but it remains for those who read their book to apply the principles of lean thinking to their own specific circumstances. Obviously, bold action is required and there are perils to take into full account. Any decisions made are, at best, subject to constant refinement and, when necessary, revision and perhaps even replacement as new circumstances develop. Effectively combining and then coordinating consumption and provision streams is indeed a journey rather than a destination.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why consumption must be as streamlined as production
Comment: Authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones were early proselytizers for the lean production philosophy, a set of "waste-not-want-not" principles that most businesses now accept. But good business requires more than efficient production. Noting that consumers are still not happy, despite an abundant supply of high-quality, low-cost products, the authors now have subjected consumption to "lean" analysis as well - and they've found that consumption is as inefficient as production used to be. Consumers face lengthy delays, unhelpful "help" lines, ineffective service representatives, and other annoying and costly wastes of time and energy. We recommend this book to managers who want to boost their customers' satisfaction by applying lean principles to consumption as well as to production. Here's how and, even more important, why.

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