The New Manufacturing Challenge

I first read this in 1992 and although quite an old book from 1987 (reprinted in 2012) Kiyoshi Suzaki's ideas on lean manufacturing are still the bedrock foundations of many people's experiences of putting real life lean manufacturing into practice. If lean is new to you I can highly recommend this book to get you started. Although the concepts when put into practice can have a massive effect on business/manufacturing the book I find is easy to understand and is not written in business speak gobbledygook! Some of the ideas you'll find discussed in here - - Eliminating waste - Back to basics discipline - meeting diversified customer need with quick setup - Developing flow on the production floor - Expanding skills for increased flexibility - Improving processes for production gains - Aiming for zero machine trouble - Scheduling a steady flow for better control - Improving with standards - Redefining the roles of conveyors and transportation - Eliminating problems at the organisational level - Establishing a competitive position That's just some of the ideas you'll find discussed in here. In here you'll find easy to understand explanations about ideas and concepts such as - - The seven wastes - Housekeeping (5S) - Set-up time reduction - Job rotation/skills development - Principles and approaches to process improvement - Judoka - Andon - POKA-YOKE - Visual controls - Total Preventative Maintenance - Cycle time control - Standard work - KANBAN Throughout you are given real life examples and there are plenty of easy to understand visual representations of the concepts in the book. There is nothing new in here. All this stuff has been done before but If you look at this book as a tool box full of tools then you can learn how to use these tools better! Some tools you may never need to use at all, some you will use more than others. Although changing business for the better I have tried to implement some of these strategies at home in regards to the kids washing their own dishes up, leaving cups and glasses all over the house, emptying bins and leaving the bathroom clean to no avail! If anybody can come up with a book called 'Managing kids The New HouseKeeping Challenge' I'd be very grateful! :( If you're a supervisor or manager or just interested in improvement techniques then I can definitely recommend giving this a read.

This is THE book for hands-on actual implementation of lean production techniques. This book answers the difficult problems accompaning implementation of the Toyota Production System. It is written in an easily understood straight-forward style. In my opinion this is the best book on boosting shopfloor efficiency. It does not shy away from discussing the problem areas. The author proves he has "been there and done it". An example is the Kanban system usually described in most books as a sytem where cards control the shop floor work flow. This book describes in detail various Kanban systems to handle the situations where the work flow is interrupted by processes requiring outside vendors or where an operation such as heat treating will slow the process. I rated this book five stars because it discusses real problems and solutions.

Aunque no es una edición reciente....las herramientas son vigentes y se explican de una manera clara a nivel general. Buen libro para adentrarse a las herramientas básicas de la mejora continua,

I like this book in many ways. Its explanations are very clear and i found it to be a pretty interesting read. Good to have!

Old but very good reference for competitive manufacturing and business.