Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement: A Deeper Look - Tapa dura

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Richard Schonberger is President of Schonberger & Associates, Inc., providing lectures, seminars, and advisory services to industrial and business organizations worldwide. Originator of the term and concepts of world-class manufacturing, he is author of numerous books, as well as some 150 articles in periodicals ranging from Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal to Quality Progress and the Journal of Cost Management. He has been awarded the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing and the British Institution of Production Engineers' International Award in Manufacturing Management, and has received the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE)'s Production and Inventory Control Award.

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Praise for Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement

"Dr. Schonberger reveals why successful companies lose their way on their continuous improvement journey and the magic formula for achieving rapid continuous improvement. This is a must-read for those who must develop or broaden their competitive advantage."
—David L. Schlotterbeck, CEO of Clinical and Medical Products, Cardinal Health

"With a stature built on decades of research, reading, and reporting, Schonberger in this book sets about one of his favorite routines: debunking what most consider to be established truths; questioning questionable practices, and offering valuable new insights. With all his opinions solidly backed up with research data, this provocative read will undoubtedly contribute new angles to the worldwide discourse on operations improvement."
—Koot Pieterse, Professor, Lean Manufacturing Group, Business School, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

"Finally, a true thought leader, Dick Schonberger, has stepped forward to give clarity to why companies either get better or plateau. Continuous improvement has been misunderstood over the years because most leaders have not fully understood the benefits and shortcomings of the individual methodologies, how they should fit together and how they are best used to engage every associate. The future clearly belongs to those who understand how to organize the pieces effectively into a robust systematic approach."
—Craig Long, Vice President, Quality & Six Sigma, Milliken & Company

Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement reveals how to refocus lean/six sigma processes on what author Richard Schonberger—world-renowned process improvement pioneer—calls "the Golden Goals": better quality, quicker response, greater flexibility, and higher value—all with a focus on the universal wants and needs of customers. This excellent step-by-step manual shows how it can be done, employing the success stories of over 100 companies including Apple, Illinois Tool Works, Dell, Inc., Wal-Mart, and General Dynamics, along with SKF of Sweden, Honda of Japan, and Flextronics of Singapore, all of which have established themselves as the new, global "Kings of Lean," surpassing even Toyota in long-term improvement.

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Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process ImprovementA Deeper Look

Among the most effective and robust improvement methodologies in the business world today, lean and six sigma offer sharp managers invaluable strategies and methods for achieving corporate goals. But the concepts behind lean six sigma, by now well-known, have proven highly susceptible to cherry-picking and avoiding difficult but higher-payoff elements.

Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement takes A Deeper Look at this high-potential science of success. Pitfalls and hidden opportunities are explained in simple terms that can help managers steer their companies' process improvement efforts toward sustained advantage in this era of global hypercompetition. Written by world-renowned best-practices pioneer Richard Schonberger, this eye-opening guide reveals invaluable benchmark data and guidance, prominently including long-term "leanness" data for over 1400 companies in thirty-six countries across thirty-three industrial sectors.

This broadly and deeply researched book provides the big picture and the details on what your corporation needs to succeed, including:

• Proven pathways to lean in addition to those of the well-known "lean core"

• How to re-energize the continuous, everyone-involved side of process improvement—as a potent complement to six sigma-based projects

• Designs for plants, production flow, and jobs that maximize human involvement in best practice methodologies

• What manufacturers should be learning from retailers and distributors about managing the supply pipelines

• Making process data primal and numeric goal setting secondary as driving forces for improvement

• Large numbers of graphs contrasting strong and weak performance of many well-known companies

• Unique business models that some of the world's most innovative companies are using effectively to achieve customer-centric results even as they reach out globally

• Addressing the question of why most lean/six sigma and other performance management initiatives undertaken by companies fall short of expectations, this indispensable book shows that sustained improvements in performance must focus on the customer, reducible to intentional dedication to continuously improving quality, response time, flexibility, and value.