Cambridge Business Association
Going Lean
Book

Going Lean

How the Best Companies Apply Lean Manufacturing Principles to Shatter Uncertainty, Drive Innovation, and Maximize Profits

Stephen A. Ruffa
AMACOM, 2008
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7

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Recommendation

People and organizations too often find that the very things they did to prepare for emergencies end up making their problems worse. Stephen A. Ruffa shows you how to use the “lean dynamics” approach to track “lag” within your operations and eliminate it before it harms your competitiveness and makes you less adaptable in a crisis. He explains how to determine where lag is hiding and how to root it out. He offers a solid plan for launching lean dynamics and getting everyone on board. Ruffa also explains how to measure and maximize value within the lean dynamics system, and tells you how to stay ahead of the “value curve.” Ruffa writes clearly and illustrates his principles by comparing Toyota and the Detroit automakers, Wal-Mart and Kmart, and Southwest and other major airlines. getAbstract recommends his book to anyone interested in learning about a new approach to business operations.

Summary

Why You Need Lean Dynamics

Successful organizations are finely tuned to thrive under their ongoing economic and competitive conditions. But when those conditions radically and abruptly change, the organizations must adapt quickly or die. Can you prepare your company for sudden, extreme change? Yes, you can, by building in flexibility that actually creates value. However, leaders always have to balance the cost of preparing for emergencies against the weighted cost of a possible crisis. Inflexible operations, blocked processes or out-of-date measurements can make it hard to weather a storm.

Lean dynamics tackles these issues precisely. It does more than just make small adjustments in processes and organizational setups. Instead, it sets out to create “transformational” changes and to bring in a “new way of managing.” Lean dynamics calls for clustering operations according to product families. It uses a measurement called “the value curve” to evaluate a company’s progress, as it unfolds, and to compare it to its competition, particularly to other lean companies. As a company makes more of its products, the value it creates follows a trajectory. It may or may not increase...

About the Author

Aerospace engineer Stephen A. Ruffa developed the concept of lean dynamics while working for more than a dozen aerospace firms in U.S. Defense Department projects. He is the co-author of Breaking the Cost Barrier, which won the Shingo Prize for excellence in manufacturing research.

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