Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together

It is desirable but not necessary to have already read Womack and Jones's previously published Lean Thinking before reading this volume. In both, their focus is on "five simple principles" which can guide and inform any organization's efforts to achieve "process brilliance" in its product development, supplier management, customer support, and production processes. The principles are: 1. Provide the value actually desired by customers. 2. Identify the value stream for each product or service. 3. Get and keep each step of the value stream in proper alignment. 4. Enable the customer to "pull" rather than "push" maximum value from what you offer. 5. Once the value, value stream, flow, and pull are established, "start over from the beginning in an endless search for perfection, the happy situation of perfect value provided with zero waste." In this context, I am reminded of Albert Einstein's emphasis on making everything as simple as possible...but no simpler. Lean initiatives should eliminate "fat" but not "muscle." Decision-makers in many organizations confuse rightsizing with downsizing. In Lean Solutions, Womack and Jones identify what they characterize as "the emerging challenges of consumption" despite the availability of better, cheaper products." And this seems very strange when we stop to consider that satisfying consumption - not just making brilliant products - is the whole point of lean production." In response to challenges such as complicated purchase decisions because "consumers are often drowning in a sea of choices," they explain how to combine truly lean provision with truly lean consumption. In process, Womack and Jones examine dozens of real-world examples of how various organizations have done so. When emerges is a new definition of value for today's consumer who insists that problems are solved completely, conveniently and without any waste of time. Moreover, today's consumer expects to receive exactly what she or he or wants, with value delivered where and when specified, with a substantial reduction of decisions which must be made to solve the given problem or fill the given need. "Our objective is simple: We aim to teach managers to see all the steps a consumer must perform to research, obtain, install, integrate, maintain, repair, upgrade, and recycle the goods and services needed to solve their problem. We then challenge each step, asking why it is necessary at all and why it often can't be performed properly. Once worthless steps are eliminated, we can talk about flow and pull, heading toward perfection." Womack and Jones insist - and I wholly agree - that lean thinking must not only guide and inform continuous efforts to perfect production of a given product or service but to perfect, also, the provision and consumption of it. To the best of my knowledge, their book is the first to provide the core concepts, strategies, and tactics to accomplish that. True, Womack and Jones suggest and explain a number of "lea

Authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones were early proselytizers for the lean production philosophy, a set of "waste-not-want-not" principles that most businesses now accept. But good business requires more than efficient production. Noting that consumers are still not happy, despite an abundant supply of high-quality, low-cost products, the authors now have subjected consumption to "lean" analysis as well - and they've found that consumption is as inefficient as production used to be. Consumers face lengthy delays, unhelpful "help" lines, ineffective service representatives, and other annoying and costly wastes of time and energy. We recommend this book to managers who want to boost their customers' satisfaction by applying lean principles to consumption as well as to production. Here's how and, even more important, why.

This book is one the best for understanding Lean applications in Services. It is not the techniques that makes this book great. These are known. The real strengths of this book are the questions it raises, the examples it provides, and its perspective on application and implementation. The questions raised are from a consumer's point of view - getting problems solved completely, when and where we want them solved, without investing too much of our 'unpaid' time. The book also clearly demonstrates how Lean can result in a 'win win' for producers and consumers. The examples illustrated are very helpful and insighful. They also cover a wide range - from Help Desks to Retail to Air Travel. Above all, the language is simple, the explanations down to earth. And yet, very insightful and thought provoking. Indeed, the book is very well crafted.

John Womack and Daniel Jones made it again; a new breakthrough book in their lean track, from The machine that changed the world (coauthored with Dan Roos), to Lean thinking and then now the Lean Solutions. In this new book they deeply investigate the area of customer value and give profound advice to rethink the logic under the processes of Lean consumption and Lean Provision. The six major point: 1) solve the customer problem completely, 2) don't waste customer's time, 3) provide exactly what the customer wants, 4) provide it exactly where it's wanted, 5) provide when it's wanted, and finally 6) continually aggredate solutions to reduce customer time and hassle. Similarly to how the Toyota Production System reduced waste for the producer and improved quality, the six principle above and the examples in the book will provide knowledge to rethink service, reducing waste and improving quality both in the customer and in the provider side. A must read for everyone involved in Lean, and in any service industry.

These people have figured out a lot about how the world's business really works. They start with a few common senarios: The new computer you got with the fancy printer, and the two won't talk to each other, Trying to get your car fixed, when, of course, it won't act up in front of the mechanic - if you even get to talk to the mechanic, Driving to the big discount store that stocks thousands of items -- expect the one you want, the business trip -- let's not even talk about the new security rules, help/support phone lines that neither help or support, nor talk American English. A lot of effort goes into fixing these problems. Lean Solutions talks instead about fixing the problems so that all this support simply isn't needed. This kind of support is basically waste. It's exactly the same thing as producing a bad product that has to be thrown away. This book follows in the series these authors have been developing. First was 'The Machine that Changed the World,' a book about the Toyota experience. This was followed by 'Lean Thinking' that generalized the concept. Now 'Lean Solutions' gets more specific with case studies, reports on the experience of companies that have succeeded and more.