Accounting for World Class Operations
Jerry Solomon and Rosemary Fullerton
WCM Associates, 2007

Having an appropriate accounting system in place is vital to the lean process. Firms need performance measurements that reflect the benefits of change made from implementing lean practices. Too often those benefits are hidden in outdated accounting reports filled with indecipherable, archaic jargon. The need for a clearer, simpler, more strategic performance measurement system in lean companies is long past due. Leadership needs a practical guide that will provide a roadmap for beneficial accounting change and confidence to achieve global competitiveness.

Jerry Solomon and Rosemary Fullerton present that roadmap in this unique and timely book, Accounting for World Class Operations. Their clear and concise writing take the mystery and fear out of a lean accounting conversion. This book offers encouragement and guidance for moving from a traditional standard cost system to a simple accounting system that provides appropriate information for a lean manufacturing environment. Their case examples from real-world experiences of successful accounting changes that support lean conversions are insightful for those wanting reassurance and direction.

The time was yesterday to fully understand and implement a system of performance measurements to support lean continuous improvement initiatives. The age-old adage that "you get what you measure" is true, and the time to revise your system of performance measurement is now!

Easier, Simpler, Faster – Systems Strategy for Lean IT
Jean Cunningham and Duane Jones
Productivity Press, 2007

For your lean transformation to be successful, your IT system must support it! To enhance and sustain its lean journey, a company must implement information systems that fully support and enhance the lean initiative. In the book, Easier, Simpler, Faster: Systems Strategy for Lean IT, Jean Cunningham and Duane Jones introduce a case study of an actual lean implementation involving an IT system of a mid-size manufacturer, highlighting the IT issues that they faced during their lean transformation.

This compelling book fully explains:

• What your company should do in regard to information systems as it implements lean.
• The changes that will be required in the information system to make it a partner with, rather than a barrier to, your company becoming a lean manufacturer and ultimately a lean enterprise.
• The opportunities that will arise for the information systems team to eliminate waste and apply lean principles in its own operations.

This book will provide you with a broader vision as well as a path to what a lean system environment will look like for your company.

Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader's Guide to Planning and Execution
Pascal Dennis
Lean Enterprise Institute, 2006

For companies to be competitive, leaders must engage people at all levels in order to focus their energy and enable them to apply lean principles to everything they do. Strategy deployment, called hoshin kanri by Toyota, has proven to be the most effective process for meeting this ongoing challenge.

In the book, Getting the Right Things Done, Pascal Dennis outlines the nuts and bolts of strategy deployment, answering two tough questions that ultimately can make or break a company's lean transformation: 1) What kind of planning system is required to inspire meaningful company-wide continuous improvement? 2) How might we change existing mental models that do not support a culture of continuous improvement?

Getting the Right Things Done is unique in several ways. It covers the strategy deployment tools but also describes in detail the underlying – and overlooked – mental model and management system for using them successfully. Secondly, it primarily focuses on the hard work of achieving and deploying key strategies, rather than on a complex process for selecting the "perfect" objective. The book also contains a wealth of simple but effective visual tools, such as filled-in charts and graphs at every step in the process, dashboards, detailed A3's, and an appendix of blank templates.

Written in a hybrid style that combines elements of a business novel with those of a how-to-workbook, the book is easy to read besides being practical. It tells the story of a fictional (yet very real) midsized company, Atlas Industries, which must dramatically improve to compete with emerging rivals and meet new customer demands.

Lean Product and Process Development
Allen Ward
Lean Enterprise Institute, 2007

Despite attempts to interpret and apply lean product development techniques, companies still struggle with design quality problems, long lead times, and high development costs. To be successful, lean product development must go beyond techniques, conventional concurrent engineering methods, standardized engineering work, or heavyweight project managers.

The book, Lean Product and Process Development, by the late Allen Ward who pioneered research into lean product development and how Toyota practiced it, reveals his passion as well as his insight about how to create and sustain a lean development system. He says the very aim of the product development process is to create profitable operational value streams, and further, creating useable knowledge is key to doing so predictably, efficiently, and effectively. To create useable knowledge requires learning, so Allen also created a basic learning model for development.

Lean Product and Process Development not only describes the technical tools needed, but also the management system, management behaviors, and mental models needed to make lean product and process development work. The book is rooted in practical experience and practical advice. It integrates both the use of technology and the management of people in producing and sustaining a lean development system. It focuses on the human dimension rather than just the mechanical application of tools. It is designed to be as clear and compelling to a line engineer/designer, as it is to an executive.

The Elegant Solution: Toyotas Formula for Mastering Innovation
Matthew May
Simon and Schuster, 2006

In his book, The Elegant Solution, Matthew May has translated into practical lessons the methods Toyota uses to generate and implement 100 times more ideas a year than the typical company. These creative problem-solving and fast-cycle learning techniques can be applied in virtually any industry.

This book is an antidote to conventional thinking on innovation. It shows how to organize the quest for the deceptively simple ideas that change everything—elegant solutions. Elegant solutions achieve the maximum effect with the simplest effort. They embrace an overarching philosophy of doing far more with—and for—much less.

Applying TWI to Retail Sales: Developing a Sales Boot Camp at La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries
Mike Martyn and Brad Parker

The Training Within Industry (TWI) program was created during the 1940’s and targeted the development of supervisors’ ability to improve jobs, lead people, and train new employees. From its launch in 1940 to its cessation in 1945, the TWI program achieved remarkable results: over 1.7 million people were trained and the program was exported to both Japan and Germany as a critical tool in the rebuilding of each country’s economy. Subsequently, the TWI program formed the foundation of what later became the Toyota Production System and has continued to be taught and practiced at Toyota to this day.

While largely lost in the United States after the war, the TWI program has seen a recent resurgence in the manufacturing sector as companies struggle with creating standard work, achieving stability in processes, and engaging employees in the process of training and improving their jobs daily. And while TWI is as relevant today as it was in 1940, there still exists a stigma that this proven methodology and four-step process to developing people is a “manufacturing” thing. To date, the majority of work recently being published about the TWI program relates to the history, development, and content of the program rather than the process of implementing the program to achieve business results. Further, what little is available on the successful implementation of the TWI program and its connection to driving lean results across an organization has been limited to manufacturing environments. However, since the original TWI program focused on the development and training of principles rather than content, there exists a tremendous opportunity to “think outside the box” and implement the TWI program in a U.S. economy that is becoming increasingly dependent upon the service sector.

Given the applicability of TWI to any business in any industry, this case study documents the implementation of the Job Instruction program at La-Z-Boy (LZB) Furniture Galleries. Beginning with aligning leadership around a common goal of simplifying the sales process and achieving stability in business results, store management teams were empowered to learn the TWI program, create and refine a standard sales process, and participate in the creation of a new TWI Sales Boot Camp. Focused on a “learn-by-doing” format, with peer-to-peer mentoring through a live role-play at its heart, LZB has seen both a dramatic increase in sales person productivity as well as the growth of a self-analytical and supportive culture of improvement as a result of implementing the boot camp.

Starting in Portland, Oregon and subsequently spreading to Edmonton, Alberta; Phoenix, Arizona; and Scranton, Pennsylvania the principles which helped guide Toyota in the development of its management and production system have radically transformed how sales people are trained and how the sales process is standardized, transmitted, and replicated in a retail environment. Finally, in combination with a targeted visual management strategy and an alignment with human resources in the recruitment, selection, and qualification of new salespeople, LZB is on the forefront of successfully transforming its business by applying lean manufacturing methodology.