Lean Library of Books about the Toyota Production System


	BOOKS WRITTEN BY OUR AFFILIATES Click on the links to purchase the following books.
		Andy & Me: Crisis And Transformation On The Lean Journey by Pascal Dennis Based on the author's personal experience with Toyota senseis and with companies in the midst of great change, Andy & Me is a business novel set in a failing New Jersey auto plant focusing on the tribulations of Tom Pappas, the plant manager. The situations, characters and plant "politics" will ring true with many readers.
		Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations by Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder Ever since Frederick Taylor advocated that it was management's job to "think" and the worker's job to "do," this perspective has been the basis for the policies, structures, and operating practices of most business organizations. Although this division between thinking and doing may have worked 100 years ago, it is severely limiting in today's environment, where it is the front-line worker who is in the best position to notice problems and suggest ideas. In example after example, the authors show how companies that encourage and implement the ideas of the entire workforce are the ones that come up with the most innovative and successful strategies. Contrary to past thinking on the subject, they make it clear that monetary rewards are not the best way to elicit ideas, and that emphasis on small ideas can be a more effective strategy than shooting for a "home run."
		The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen by Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek The Quick and Easy Kaizen system recognizes that every worker has hidden creative talent locked inside of them. Toyota successfully harnesses employee innovation, with over 1.5 million employee suggestions implemented each year. This represents about $300 million in annual savings that go straight to the bottom line. In his book, Norman Bodek discusses how the Quick and Easy Kaizen system becomes a powerful tool for bringing forth numerous small but significant improvement ideas from all employees.
		Lean Production Simplified: A Plain-Language Guide to the World's Most Powerful Production System by Pascal Dennis Lean Production Simplified is a plain language guide to the lean production system. The book is organized around a central image: the "house of lean production", which will help the reader grasp the system and the factors that animate it. Additionally, the book provides an insider’s view of Toyota, and how this company continues to succeed. Author and LEAN Affiliate, Pascal Dennis, is a professional engineer, and educator with 20 years experience in manufacturing, public service, and consulting engineering. He developed his lean thinking skills on the shop floor of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, and working with lean masters in Japan and North America.
		Rebirth of American Industry by William H. Waddell This excellent book will make some enemies. It is outspoken, hard-hitting, and correct. The authors answer the question "why have so few American companies successfully transformed themselves into lean organizations". They take us back to the origins of lean at Ford Motor Company and Toyota, and contrast them with the modern American manufacturer. The solutions advocated will be unpopular because they cut to the heart of "professional" management theory and show that the lean transformation must start not on the shop-floor but by active transformation in the executive offices."

	RECOMMENDED BOOKS Click on the links to purchase the following books.
		Better Thinking, Better Results by Bob L. Emiliani, David Stec, Lawrence Grasso and James Stodder Destined to become a Lean classic, Better Thinking, Better Results is a complete description of how to achieve an enterprise-wide Lean transformation.
		The Communication Catalyst by Mickey Connolly and Richard Rianoshek Communication consultants Mickey Connolly and Richard Rianoshek believe that under the banner of expedience, managers are wasting the creative power of their employees, and that more output could be produced faster by managing the social issues that most owners and managers step over.
		The Complete Lean Enterprise: A Value Stream Mapping For Administrative And Office Processes by Beau Keyte and Drew Locher It may surprise some people, but all of the lean concepts typically applied to the production processes of an organization also apply to nonproduction and administrative processes. The challenge is being creative enough to figure out how to best use them in particular areas of the company in order to realize meaningful benefits.
		The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done by Peter F. Drucker No time to read even one of Drucker's books? Here's a compilation of 366 key concepts of Drucker's, delivered in daily doses and easy to digest.
		Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business by Patrick M. Lencioni The business meeting—a necessary evil or a vital and invigorating component of running an organization? According to management consultant Lencioni (The Five Temptations of a CEO), meetings should fit the latter description, but more often than not, he says, they don't.
		The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker First published in 1966 and still in print today, this is perhaps Drucker's most "personal" book describing how the individual "knowledge worker" (you) can best contribute and achieve results. Also our president's favorite and most quoted Drucker book.
		The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management by Peter F. Drucker So you want to study Drucker, but between his 30-odd books and countless articles, you just don't know where to begin? Then this book is for you. Think of The Essential Drucker as a "reader's digest" compilation of his works.
		The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni Another "leadership fable" from Lencioni that conveys his solid prescription for organizational health--aiming for less politics, lower turnover, more productivity, and higher morale. In this case, his "four disciplines at the heart of making any organization world class" are revealed: Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team; create organizational clarity; communicate organizational clarity; and reinforce organizational clarity through human systems. Using a type of "Plan, Do, Check, Adjust" approach with organizational leadership, Lencioni illustrates how these principles can be beneficially employed--and how an organization can be stymied when they're missing.
		Henry Ford's Lean Vision by William A. Levinson This work asserts that the process originally thought to have originated with Toyota was actually the invention of Henry Ford.
		Implementing a Mixed Model Kanban System by James C. Vatalaro and Robert E. Taylor A comprehensive and in-depth guide to implementing a kanban within the value stream. Its plain-language approach provides step-by-step coverage and guidance of the implementation, metrics, and dynamics of an effective kanban system.
		Kanban Just-In-Time at Toyota: Management Begins at the Workplace by Japan Mgmt Assoc (Translator)Ed , Japan Management Association (Editor) and David J. Lu (Translator) Toyota's world-renowned success proves that with kanban, the Just-In-Time production system (JIT) makes most other manufacturing practices obsolete.
		Lean Machines: Learning From the Leaders Of the Next Industrial Revolution by Richard A. McCormack A unique compilation of interviews with 17 of the country's most respected executives who have extensive experience and intellectual understanding of Lean.
		Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones In the revised and updated edition of Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation , authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones provide a thoughtful expansion upon their value-based business system based on the Toyota model.
		The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's five-million-dollar, five-year study on the future of the automobile, a groundbreaking analysis of the worldwide move from mass production to lean production.
		Making the Numbers Count: The Accountant as a Change Agent on the World Class Team by Brian H. Maskell Traditional accounting systems hold back improvement strategies and process innovation. Maskell's timely book addresses the growing phenomenon confronting managers in continuous improvement environments.
		Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity by Will Kaydos A thorough overview of the process for defining, justifying, designing, implementing and analyzing results for performance measurement systems. Includes numerous real world examples which show how the general principles are converted into specific practice.
		Poka-Yoke: Improving Product Quality by Preventing Defects by Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, Factory Magazine (Editor), Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, Ltd. and Factory Magazine If your goal is 100 percent zero defects, here is the book for you - a completely illustrated guide to poka-yoke (mistake-proofing) for supervisors and shop-floor workers.
		Product Development for the Lean Enterprise: Why Toyota's System Is Four Times More Productive and How You Can Implement It by Michael N. Kennedy This book is a must-read for leaders that demand excellence in the development of new products. It lays out the "right stuff" for productive product development: the right culture, the right tools, the right process, etc. With all the current focus on centralization, controls, and program management offices, this is a refreshing look at what is really necessary to be successful in product development.
		Real Numbers: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization by Jean E. Cunningham, Orest Fiume and White Lisa Truit Are you getting a true picture of your company's performance? This explosive issue and its implications are fully explored in Real Numbers.
		The Sayings of Shigeo Shingo: Key Strategies for Plant Improvement by Shigeo Shingo and Andrew P. Dillon (Editor) Shigeo Shingo is truly one of the most under rated quality gurus out there. His methods and genius rank with Deming and Juran, but are much more easily applied.
		Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors by Patrick M. Lencioni Marketing won't speak to engineering. Sales thinks production hogs the budget. Front desk believes back room's lazy. These sorts of turf wars, which turn outwardly unified companies into groupings of uncommunicative "silos," are the stuff of management lore.
		The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology by James M. Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker The ability to bring new and innovative products to market rapidly is the prime critical competence for any successful consumer-driven company. All industries, especially automotive, are slashing product development lead times in the current hyper-competitive marketplace. This book is the first to thoroughly examine and analyze the truly effective product development methodology that has made Toyota the most forward-thinking company in the automotive industry.
		Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production by Taiichi Ohno Here's the first information ever published in Japan on the Toyota production system (known as Just-In-Time manufacturing).
		The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a renowned authority on Toyota's Lean methods, explains how you can adopt these principles--known as the "Toyota Production System" or "Lean Production"--to improve the speed of your business processes, improve product and service quality, and cut costs, no matter what your industry.
		Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos by Donald J. Wheeler With depth and breadth of material, Wheeler has created a simple yet powerful guide to Statistical Process Control- a topic that at times can be quite intimidating to the statistically untrained. With his simple and illustrative presentation style, this book is easily accessible to all levels of practitioners - professional statisticians will enjoy and benefit from the book as well as novices in the field.
		Who's Counting? A Lean Accounting Business Novel by Jerrold M. Solomon In many companies that have started a Lean transformation, the effort was later jeopardized because no one understood the impact their financials ahead of time - often resulting in an unpleasant surprise for the stakeholders. Solomon does a good job of explaining the accounting issues that can affect the bottom line during the first years of Lean by telling us a story line that is both interesting and clear. Winner of the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence, Who's Counting? is a good introduction to lean accounting, focusing particularly on the marginal costing versus absorption costing debate. Other accounting issues and lean techniques are also covered, including stock valuation, the impact on earnings per share, and a glimpse of what a kaizen event might comprise in the Accounting department.