Lean for the Cash-Strapped Leader The Path to Growth and Profitability

Created by Lean practitioners with real-world, results-proven track records, this book is designed to help struggling managers and leaders, interested in the benefits of Lean but bereft of budgets to hire full-time consultants, start substantial change in their enterprises and begin to reap the benefits of Lean.

At once a how-to manual and a strategic management guide, the book lays out, in simple English, all the steps for implementing Lean, from formulating a strategy and managing organizational change, to establishing a kanban-driven, level-loaded production system.

Presenting strategies that will fit in most existing budgets, Lean for the Cash-Strapped Leader: The Path to Growth and Profitability uses easy-to-read language with flashes of humor to reveal proven methods that will help your organization initiate change and begin reaping the rewards of a Lean operations system in any industry.

The book avoids acronyms, complex Lean terminology, and academic froth to convey the essential instructions, detail, and information you need. Identifying powerful methods for initiating a Lean value stream that require minimal investment, the book is designed to help owners of small businesses and senior managers of larger ones make their enterprises more efficient, more productive, and ultimately more profitable.

Along the way, the book gives detailed attention to the need for the "soft message" that underwrites and supports the actions required for a business to achieve the transformation that Lean can bring. Lean for the Cash-Strapped Leaderemphasizes the messaging and the degree of management involvement required to achieve a successful Lean result.

Learn more about the book at: http://www.leanforthecashstrappedleader.com/

Brief Overview of Lean and Elimination of Waste. A Different Way of Thinking. Rationalizing the Inventory. Kanban Signals. Deriving Dependent Demand for Kanban. Documenting the Current State in a Process Map. Creating the Future-State Process Map. Understanding Kanban-Heijunka Card-Flow Process. Kanbans and Heijunkas. Continuous Improvement, the Kaizen Event. Beginning the Kaizen and Documenting Reality. The Percent-Loading Chart. Using Percent-Loading Chart. Dependent-Demand Manufacturing Kanbans. The Total-Value Flow with Standard Work and Visuals. Tying Up Loose Ends in the New Total-Value Flow. Competition and Continuous Improvement. Recommended Readings.

John E. Madigan earned his BA from the University of Denver. While at Wiremold’s Chicago manufacturing plant, he held management positions in both materials and operations. Madigan likewise benefited from Lean training delivered by Shingijutsu and Moffitt Associates. After Wiremold, Madigan did Lean implementation consulting and training in the Midwest for 7 years at various companies—from the small privately held company to several Fortune 500 companies.
Todd C. Maher’s educational credentials include a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Illnois and an MBA in operations management from DePaul University. He worked for Wiremold during their Lean transformation and held leadership positions in both operations and engineering. At Wiremold, he also benefited from 10 years of training delivered by Shingijutsu Ltd in both the US and Japan. After Wiremold, Maher has spent the last 13 years helping both private and public companies with their Lean initiatives. Maher has participated in or led over 500 different kaizen events since learning this philosophy.

Mohammad Ali earned a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BS in mathematics and physics. He has also received hands-on training in PMP, CCNA, and is Security+ certified in information technology.

Ali has participated in numerous kaizen events during his tenure at Wiremold’s Chicago plant. He is an expert in creating VBA-based Microsoft Access applications with user-friendly graphical interfaces. He has successfully designed, tested, and implemented a number of such applications for a number of small- to medium-size manufacturers for their kanban cards’ creation process.