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Articles by James Womack - Lean Thinking

Cost Cutting is Much Different than Waste Removal by Jim Womack, Dec 2008
"As the lean transformation proceeds, convert physical inventories into cash, but keep an inventory of cash to buffer the firm during the down cycle. From the standpoint of modern financial thinking, this seems sub-optimal. Shouldn't all of the freed-up cash be put aggressively in play in the financial markets? But in the current crisis, firms with stable cash reserves can keep new programs on schedule and will surge in the upturn as competitors who delay or cancel new projects fall behind."
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Thought Leaders -- Lean On Me by Jim Womack, Dec 2007
"Toyota has a supplier management system that is still the best-in-class, and a good part of Toyota's recent quality issue has been bringing in a whole bunch of non-Toyota traditional suppliers and trying to teach them the Toyota Management System, and they're struggling because it turns out -- and I should know this better than anybody, it's what I've been doing for the last 20 years -- it's hard to get people to change old ways of thinking." This interview includes many other great insights.
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From lean tools to lean management by Jim Womack, Jul 2007
"Teach all managers to ask questions about their value streams (rather than giving answers and orders from higher levels). Turn these questions into experiments using Plan-Do-Check-Act. Only management by science through constant experimentation to answer questions can produce sustainable improvements in value streams."
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State of the Auto World by Jim Womack, May 2007
Podcast interview by Mark Graban. "G.E. has been a 'make the numbers' company as opposed to a 'fix the company' company, says Jim. But now GE is saying they have to be like Toyota... 'is there anything beyond Six Sigma or even to Six Sigma?'"
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Why Toyota Won and How Toyota Can Lose by Jim Womack, Apr 2007
"Toyotas great risk, the way it can lose, is that its new managers and the managers in its new suppliers will revert to the old, mass-production mentality of the companies or schools they have come from. If this happens, Toyotas management performance will regress toward the mean. Instead of moving the whole world to embrace lean management, Toyota will become just another company. And that will be a tragic failure for us all."
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Machine Revisited by Jim Womack, Mar 2007
Podcast of Mark Graban interviewing Jim Womack; discussing the reissue of Machine that Changed the World: "the biggest disappointment... was to have people tell me it was a great book about fa factories."
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Jim Womack podcast on Lean in China by Jim Womack, Dec 2006
Jim Womack talks about the state of lean manufacturing in China on the lean blog.
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From Lean Tools to Lean Management by Jim Womack, Nov 2006
"Lean tools are great. We all need to master and deploy them, and our efforts of the last 15 years to do so are not wasted. But just as a carpenter needs a vision of what to build in order to get the full benefit of a hammer, we need a clear vision of our organizational objectives and better management methods before we pick up our lean tools."
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Teaching the Big Box New Tricks by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Nov 2005
"The consequence, in terms of performance, is remarkable. Total "touches" on the product (each of which involves costly human effort) have been reduced from 150 to 50. The total throughput time, from the filling line at the supplier to the customer leaving the store with the cola, has declined from 20 days to five days."
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Lean Manufacturing Visionary Jim Womack On Frontiers Of Lean Thinking by Jim Womack, May 2005
"by bonus systems motivating sales staff to make the month or make the quarter and producing a wave of orders at the end of the reporting period. A better approach to these problems is to revamp the bonuses so they are rolling averages rather that don't encourage big batches of orders."
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The Dramatic Spread of Lean Thinking by Jim Womack, Apr 2005
"I am delighted with the spread of lean thinking far beyond the factory and far beyond the high-wage economies to every corner of the world and to every value-creating activity."
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Lean Consumption by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Mar 2005
"Lean production transformed manufacturing. Now it?s time to apply lean thinking to the processes of consumption. By minimizing customers? time and effort and delivering exactly what they want when and where they want it, companies can reap huge benefits."
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A Lean Walk Through History by Jim Womack, Jan 2005
"Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with its many advances and setbacks, it's easy to begin filling in some of the other milestones: By 1765, French general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had grasped the significance of standardized designs and interchangeable parts to facilitate battlefield repairs. (Actually doing this cost-effectively in practice was another matter and required another 125 years.)"
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Going Lean in Health Care by James P. Womack et. al., Nov 0002
"Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients ? the 'customers' at the heart of it all."
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Articles and Interviews on James Womack's ideas - Lean Thinking

The Role of Purpose and Your Role by Mark Graban, Feb 2010
"Are you just laying bricks or are you building a cathedral? You want people to understand their purpose, not just their job description or the tasks that are assigned to them. This is very similar to Jim Womack's 'Purpose, Process, People' model. Your 'role' (what you are responsible for) is more than your task assignments"
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Machine Revisited by Jim Womack, Mar 2007
Podcast of Mark Graban interviewing Jim Womack; discussing the reissue of Machine that Changed the World: "the biggest disappointment... was to have people tell me it was a great book about fa factories."
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Jim Womack podcast on Lean in China by Jim Womack, Dec 2006
Jim Womack talks about the state of lean manufacturing in China on the lean blog.
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The Lion of Lean: An Interview with James Womack by Francis J. Quinn, Jul 2005
"Lean people are always technology skeptics. They?re not Luddites, mind you, they?re just technology skeptics. They spend their time on creating a process that requires as little information as possible, while the rest of us try to figure out how can we get more and more and more information."
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Lean Manufacturing Visionary Jim Womack On Frontiers Of Lean Thinking by Jim Womack, May 2005
"by bonus systems motivating sales staff to make the month or make the quarter and producing a wave of orders at the end of the reporting period. A better approach to these problems is to revamp the bonuses so they are rolling averages rather that don't encourage big batches of orders."
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Muda, Service, and Flow by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins,
Chapter from Natural Capitalism. "The nearly universal antidote to such wasteful practices is what Womack and Jones call 'lean thinking,' a method that has four interlinked elements: the continuous flow of value, as defined by the customer, at the pull of the customer, in search of perfection (which is in the end the elimination of muda)."
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Books by James Womack

Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones.
"In this landmark new book, James Womack and Daniel Jones deconstruct this broken producer-consumer model and show businesses how to repair it. Across all industries, companies that apply the principles of lean consumption will learn how to provide the full value consumers desire from products without wasting time or effort -- theirs or the consumers' -- and as a result these companies will be more profitable and competitive."
The Machine That Changed the World The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones (Contributor) and Daniel Roos (Contributor), 1991. Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology five-million-dollar, fourteen-country International Motor Vehicle Program's five year study on the future of the worldwide auto industry. buy the hardcover version buy the audio tape version
Lean Thinking Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, 2003. Highly Recommended. Exceptional book that should be read by every manger.
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