Manufacturing Operations and Supply Chain Management: The Lean Approach

This book is authoritatively written by two researchers working for Dan Jones at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre in Cardiff University. Dan is co-author of the Machine that Changed the World & Lean Thinking - the books that started the whole lean thing off - and wrote a couple of the chapters. It provides an excellent set of case studies and chapters written by a number of leading academics and practitioners in the lean arena. The book is a great reference aid for a lean practitioner. It is made up of 7 sections - including background to where lean came from and the principles, a section on analysing supply chain performance and identifying waste, examples of improvement activities conducted by the authors and the Cardiff research team, and a section (Towards the Future) looking at new areas of lean research and new lean tools that practitioners will provide thought provoking and really useful. It does a number of things really well: 1. It is a good reference book as it contains manageable chapters that can be read in isolation from one another. There are good summaries of things like the Lean Principles, 7 wastes etc. and a good section on further sources of information on lean. 2. For the practitioner there are some useful tools and techniques that can be taken away and used right away - for example the value stream mapping and demand amplification tool sections are really interesting. 3. It takes lean manufacturing and shows how it is applicable in a number of environments - very thought provoking and quite leading edge. I would say it is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in lean - student or practitioner.