Lean Machines: Learning From The Leaders Of The Next Industrial Revolution provides readers with a unique compilation of interviews with some of the country's most respected executives who have deep intellectual and emotional experience in implementing lean.

CEOs, vice presidents, consultants, Wall Street analysts and accountants provide readers with their perspectives on how to implement a lean business system. They are the architects of such successful implementations as Pratt & Whitney's Achieving Competitive Excellence program, the Danaher Business System, the Alcoa Production System and Freudenberg NOK's hugely successful six-step lean process.

Each of the 15 offers advice on how to overcome the barriers from the shop floor, to mid-level management, to the board room. They provide their personal experiences, insights and recommendations on the most important aspects of embedding lean systems within a corporate culture. All have successfully implemented a fundamentally different and often counter-intuitive system of running their business based on the lean principles of build to order, continuous improvement and the elimination of waste.

The interviews were conducted by Manufacturing News Editor & Publisher Richard McCormack and include the following individuals:

o George Koenigsaecker, Former CEO, HON Industries and Principal, Simpler Consulting;

o Michael Joyce, Corporate Vice President of Operating Excellence at Lockheed Martin;

o Robert Weiner, Senior Vice President of Global Manufacturing, Exide Technologies;

o Mark DeLuzio, Architect, Danaher Business System & President of Lean Horizons;

o James Womack, President, Lean Enterprise Institute and author of Lean Thinking and The Machine That Changed The World;

o Dave Logozzo, Director of Manufacturing Operations, Delphi Corp.;

o Cliff Ransom, Director of Research, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC;

o Ken Kreafle, Vice President of Quality at Toyota, Georgetown, Ky.;

o Keith Turnbull, Executive Vice President, Alcoa Business System;

o Allen Haggerty, General Manager of Engineering, Boeing;

o Brian Maskell, President, BMA Inc., Lean Accounting;

o Art Byrne, President and CEO of Wiremold Co.;

o Major Gen. Dennis Haines, Warner Robins AFB;

o Joseph Day, CEO, Freudenberg-NOK; and

o Dan Yurovich, CEO, Barry Controls

o Lt. Col. Fred Hart, Commander, U.S. Army Red River Depot

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People who successfully implement lean manufacturing must be strong believers and must have a personal mental model of lean that functions at the level of a craft - a creative skill for assembling productivity methods and policies into powerfully efficient manufacturing machines. As the great Japanese coaches from Toyota teach Westerners, there is no cookbook, lean is a way of thinking.

The literature on lean production is disappointing. Lean manufacturing books tend to be long dreary laundry lists of productivity methods and technical techniques for quality. There is little available that gives insight into how the great master craftsmen and craftswomen put together marvelous lean machines of production - until now.

This book by Richard McCormack finally brings us face to face with the creative processes of great designers of production systems. Imagine yourself as a novice artist sitting down for a conversation with Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Michelangelo. That is what McCormack brings us in this book - chats with the virtuosos of lean production. Forget those paint-by-numbers books. Either go see the real thing or read "Lean Machines".

An interesting view from the recent pastMar 21, 2012
By G. Davies
This book includes a number of interviews with industry managers who were attempting to implement Lean Manufacturing several years ago. The most interesting message that might be derived from the collection is the contrast of outlooks in the range of actual experience. Those with the least actual experience present the most aggressive and optimistic expectations. Those with the most experience seem to have a much more humble and cautious outlook. The contrast illustrates the contrast between Japanese and American leadership cultures. It would be very interesting to follow-up on the actual experience since these interviews. My own experience with one of the interviewed manager/leaders who was attempting the most aggressive implementation showed that he didn't recognize his own blindness to the cultural differences that led to his failure.

0 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Virtuosos of Lean ProductionSep 15, 2002
By fred stahl
This is a hot book! I coached a team of manufacturing managers who worked in a large traditional factory. Our job was to study manufacturing operations in companies that had adopted Toyota's productivity methods and policies. While the men and women on the team had read about lean production, they were disquieted and perhaps even disturbed by obviously highly performing plants that were organized and operated according to principles foreign to their beliefs. At each plant we visited their discomfort deepened. Then, somewhere between the second and fourth visit, each manager had an epiphany. There was some kind of logical reorganization of the manufacturing furniture in their minds and they "got it", as they described the event. Others said, "the light came on." They saw the fundamental logic and sense underlying each lean factory even though each facility assembled pieces of Toyota's productivity methods and policies into its own unique manufacturing system. Interestingly, each member of the visit team became a passionate believer of lean manufacturing. The greatest skeptics became the most outspoken advocates. They called it "getting religion."

People who successfully implement lean manufacturing must be strong believers and must have a personal mental model of lean that functions at the level of a craft - a creative skill for assembling productivity methods and policies into powerfully efficient manufacturing machines. As the great Japanese coaches from Toyota teach Westerners, there is no cookbook, lean is a way of thinking.

The literature on lean production is disappointing. Lean manufacturing books tend to be long dreary laundry lists of productivity methods and technical techniques for quality. There is little available that gives insight into how the great master craftsmen and craftswomen put together marvelous lean machines of production - until now.

This book by Richard McCormack finally brings us face to face with the creative processes of great designers of production systems. Imagine yourself as a novice artist sitting down for a conversation with Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Michelangelo. That is what McCormack brings us in this book - chats with the virtuosos of lean production. Forget those paint-by-numbers books. Either go see the real thing or read "Lean Machines".