Best Practices In Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement: A Deeper Look
- 6h 14m
- Richard Schonberger
- John Wiley & Sons (US)
- 2008
Among the most effective and robust improvement methodologies in the business world today, lean and six sigma offer sharp managers invaluable strategies and methods for achieving corporate goals. But the concepts behind lean six sigma, by now well-known, have proven highly susceptible to cherry-picking and avoiding difficult but higher-payoff elements.
Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement takes A Deeper Look at this high-potential science of success. Pitfalls and hidden opportunities are explained in simple terms that can help managers steer their companies' process improvement efforts toward sustained advantage in this era of global hypercompetition. Written by world-renowned best-practices pioneer Richard Schonberger, this eye-opening guide reveals invaluable benchmark data and guidance, prominently including long-term "leanness" data for over 1400 companies in thirty-six countries across thirty-three industrial sectors.
This broadly and deeply researched book provides the big picture and the details on what your corporation needs to succeed, including:
- Proven pathways to lean in addition to those of the well-known "lean core"
- How to re-energize the continuous, everyone-involved side of process improvement—as a potent complement to six sigma-based projects
- Designs for plants, production flow, and jobs that maximize human involvement in best practice methodologies
- What manufacturers should be learning from retailers and distributors about managing the supply pipelines
- Making process data primal and numeric goal setting secondary as driving forces for improvement
- Large numbers of graphs contrasting strong and weak performance of many well-known companies
- Unique business models that some of the world's most innovative companies are using effectively to achieve customer-centric results even as they reach out globally
Addressing the question of why most lean/six sigma and other performance management initiatives undertaken by companies fall short of expectations, this indispensable book shows that sustained improvements in performance must focus on the customer, reducible to intentional dedication to continuously improving quality, response time, flexibility, and value.
About the Author
Richard Schonberger is President of Schonberger & Associates, Inc., providing lectures, seminars, and advisory services to industrial and business organizations worldwide. Originator of the term and concepts of world-class manufacturing, he is author of numerous books, as well as some 150 articles in periodicals ranging from Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal to Quality Progress and the Journal of Cost Management. He has been awarded the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing and the British Institution of Production Engineers' International Award in Manufacturing Management, and has received the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)'s Production and Inventory Control Award.
In this Book
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Best Practices In Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement— A Deeper Look
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Magnitude Advances in Competitive Standards and Technologies
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Global Leanness—An Unstable Phenomenon
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Big Question—Does Lean Beget Financial Success?
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Ultimate Trend—Improving the Rate of Improvement
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Waste Elimination, Kaizen, and Continuous Improvement—Misdefined, Misunderstood
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The Metrics Trap
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The Case Against (Much of) Management Goal Setting
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Fortress by Culture
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Vengeful Numbers
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Process Improvement—Stretching Company Capabilities
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Unique Business Models (Big Ideas)
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Does Rapid Growth Put the Brakes on Lean?
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Losing Their Way—or Not
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Global Lean Champions—Passing the Torch
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How Overweight Companies Get Lean
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Flow-Through Facilities
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External Linkages
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Leanness Rankings for Thirty-Three Industrial Sectors
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Electronics—A Metamorphosis
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Motor-Vehicle Industry—Earliest but Lagging
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Aerospace-Defense—OEMS Are Soaring; Suppliers Are Not
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Other Industries
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Epilogue
