Management Theory Review: Lean Thinking - James Womack and Daniel Jones

January 14, 2022

Lean Thinking - James Womack and Daniel Jones - Book Summary

A presentation done by Dr. K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao on Lean Management

James Womack and Daniel Jones were involved in the MIT Project that came out with the book "The Machine that Changed the World." They further elaborated their ideas on lean enterprise in the book "Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation."

Essential Background Reading to Understand Lean Thinking

Toyota Production System - Origin and Development - Taiichi Ohno

Taiichi Ohno on Industrial Engineering - Toyota Style Industrial Engineering

Toyota Production System - IE Point of View - Shigeo Shingo

Industrial Engineering - Foundation of Toyota Production System Chapter 1 to 3 of the book - Presentation
Toyota Production System Industrial Engineering - Shigeo Shingo Chapters 4 to 10
Introducing and Implementing the Toyota Production System - Shiego Shingo Chapter 11 of the book

The Machine That Changed the World - Book Summary and Excerpts 1990

Lean Thinking - Book Summary

They proposed five lean principles and wrote one chapter on each principle

Five Principles of Lean - Womack and Jones

Chapter No. - Chapter

1. Value

2. Value Stream
3. Flow
4. Pull
5. Perfection

1. Value

To design a lean production system, the product to be produced has to be decide with appropriate methods. Providing the wrong good or service is ineffective to start with itself. Every activity must be effective and efficient. Ineffectiveness is waste.

Lean thinking must start with a conscious attempt to precisely define value in terms of specific products with specific capabilities offered at specific prices. It has to be developed through a dialogue with selected customers based on sampling to reflect the population of potential buyers. Rethinking can cover the entire world, to determine where in the world the opportunity is there to create value.

Identify the Value Stream

The value stream is the set of all the specific actions required to bring a specific product through the three critical tasks of any business: the product development, design & production system design and installation task running from concept through detailed design and engineering to production launch, the information management task running from order-taking through detailed scheduling to delivery, and the physical transformation task proceeding from raw materials to a finished product in the hands of the customer.

Identifying the entire value stream for each product (or product family) is the next step in lean thinking. The value stream has to be graphically presented. The value stream map exposes enormous, amounts of waste. Three types of actions occur along the value stream: (1) Actions that unambiguously create value. (2) Steps that create no value but to be unavoidable with current technologies and production assets: inspections can be placed in this category. Term them type one muda). And (3) some steps that create no value (Type Two muda). This is similar to eliminate step of process chart analysis.

There is lot of waste in the flow of information and flow of material between buying and selling firms in the value stream from raw materials to finished products. Lean thinking must go beyond the firm, the to look at the whole value stream: the entire set of activities entailed in creating and producing a specific product, from concept through detailed design to actual availabilitv. from the initial sale through order entry and production scheduling to delivery, and from raw materials produced far away and out of sight right into the hands of the customer. The organizational mechanism for doing this is termed as the

lean enterprise by the authors.

p.112

Case Studies on Lean Transformations

6. The Lean Revolution in Lantech
7. The Lean Revolution in Wiremold

8. The Acid Test

9. Lean Thinking versus German Technik

10. Mighty Toyota, Tiny Showa

11. An Action Plan - To Convert Your Company into one having Lean Manufacturing & Lean Supply Chain

Lean Thinking - Further Development

Professor Peter Hines, who worked with Daniel Jones, says that the five are not sufficient and proposed 8 principles

8 Principles Proposed by Professor Peter Hines

Purpose
Process
People
Pull
Prevention
Partnering
Planet
Perfection

https://www.atem.org.au/eknowledge-repository/command/download_file/id/90/filename/-The_Principles_of_The_Lean_Business_System_Prof_Peter_Hines.pdf

Lean Thinking - Bibliography

https://www.atem.org.au/eknowledge-repository/command/download_file/id/90/filename/-The_Principles_of_The_Lean_Business_System_Prof_Peter_Hines.pdf

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/engineering-systems-division/esd-60-lean-six-sigma-processes-summer-2004/lecture-notes/1_1leanthinking.pdf

Peter Hines, Matthias Holweg, Nick Rich, (2004) "Learning to evolve: A review of contemporary lean thinking", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 24 Iss: 10, pp.994 - 1011
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=849566&

The genealogy of lean production
Matthias Holweg
2007/3/31
Journal of Operations Management, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 420-437

Lean distribution: concepts, contributions, conflicts
Andreas Reichhart, Matthias Holweg
2007/8/15
International Journal of Production Research, Volume 45, Issue 16, Pages 3699-3722

The lean toolbox: The essential guide to lean transformation
John Bicheno, Matthias Holweg
2009
Publisher: Production and Inventory Control, Systems and Industrial Engineering (PICSIE) Books

2013
Rania A.M. Shamah, (2013) "Measuring and building lean thinking for value creation in supply chains", International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, Vol. 4 Iss: 1, pp.17 - 35
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17084276

The role of Lean thinking in increasing resource efficiency in the UK food and drink supply chain
September 2013
http://www.oakdenehollins.co.uk/media/270/11668_20131114RevisedLeanresearchreport-DEFR01270FO0425_from_defra_website.pdf

A Conceptual Model of Lean Manufacturing Dimensions

Procedia Technology

Volume 11, 2013, Pages 1292–1298
4th International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics, ICEEI 2013
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212017313004817