Learning with Lean : Unleashing the Potential for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

The toughest Lean journeys are those taken in organizations that have achieved long-term success. Processes and people become fixed in their ways and exhibit a natural resistance to change. But, regardless of how well your organization is performing, unless you have a sustainable competitive advantage, you are at risk. Examining the performance gap between good organizations and great ones, Learning with Lean: Unleashing the Potential for Sustainable Competitive Advantage explains how to use Lean as a learning vehicle for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage. Helping you better understand the current state of your organization, the book outlines a series of five simple phases for developing an architecture and implementation plan to transform your organization’s performance. These five phases fit neatly into a closed-system model that has similarities to the Plan-Do-Check-Act quality model. The model is simple, easy to communicate, and easy to implement—Assess, Plan, Prepare, Do, and Learn. Supplies a brief overview of Lean tools Provides an understanding of the Voice of the Customer as a focusing engine Covers measurement and goal setting Illustrates the dynamics of organizational change Explains how to boost learning through Lean The authors guide you through the deployment of training and the implementation of new knowledge and skills around Lean. In addition, they also explain how to find and improve on the areas where waste exists so your organization can reinvent the way it learns. Effective management techniques recognize the need for balance, and this book is no different. Helping you pinpoint where those balances and dichotomies exist, it arms you with powerful techniques to manage these challenges and to transform your organization into a change-hungry Lean learning organization with a sustainable competitive advantage.