News | October 7, 2008

New Book "Managing To Learn" Gets To The Heart Of Lean Management

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The latest book from the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) reveals the thinking underlying the A3 management process at the heart of lean management and lean leadership.

Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead by Toyota veteran John Shook, reveals how A3 thinking helps managers and executives identify, frame, and then act on problems and challenges. Shook calls this approach, which is captured in the simple structure of an A3 report, "the key to Toyota's entire system of developing talent and continually deepening its knowledge and capabilities."

The A3 Report is a Toyota-pioneered practice of getting the problem, the analysis, the corrective actions, and the action plan down on a single sheet of large (A3) paper, often with the use of graphics. A3 paper is the international term for a large sheet of paper, roughly equivalent to the 11-by-17-inch U.S. sheet.

"The widespread adoption of the A3 process standardizes a methodology for innovating, planning, problem-solving, and building foundational structures for sharing a broader and deeper form of thinking that produces organizational learning deeply rooted in the work itself," says Shook, who 10 years ago co-authored Learning to See, a groundbreaking LEI publication that taught readers how to map value streams to identify and eliminate waste. Learning to See has sold more than 173,000 copies and been translated into 12 languages.

A Way of Lean Thinking

Management expert James Womack, Ph.D., LEI founder and chairman, predicts Managing to Learn will have as deep an impact on the way lean companies manage people as Learning to See had on managing processes. "Readers will learn an underlying way of thinking that reframes all activities as learning activities at every level of the organization, whether it's standardized work and kaizen at the individual level, system kaizen at the managerial level, or fundamental strategic decisions at the corporate level."

A unique layout puts the thoughts of a lean manager struggling to apply the A3 process to a key project on one side of the page and the probing questions of the boss who is coaching him through the process on the other side. As a result, readers learn how to write a powerful A3 -- while learning why the technique is at the core of lean management and lean leadership.

Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Leadhttp://www.lean.org/Bookstore/ProductDetails.cfm?SelectedProductID=246
Softcover: 138 pages
ISBN: 978-1-934109-20-5
Price: $50.00 (20% discount on purchases of 10 or more copies)

Editors/Producers
For review copies of Managing to Learn, contact Chet Marchwinski at LEI: cmarchwinski@lean.org or 617-871-2930.

About author John Shook
John Shook learned about lean while working for 10 years with Toyota, helping that company transfer its production, engineering, and management systems from Japan to its overseas affiliates and suppliers. This real-world experience in implementing lean principles throughout an organization gives him extraordinary insights into the challenges faced by those who are interested in lean manufacturing. As co-author of Learning to See, John helped introduce Value Stream Mapping as the tool that allows lean practitioners to speak a common language.

He now spends his time researching and developing lean principles with Jim Womack, Dan Jones, and Jose Ferro as a senior advisor in the Lean Enterprise Institute, and co-directing the University of Michigan, Japan Technology Management Program. As head of Lean Transformations Group, an active consulting group, John works with companies to help them understand and implement lean manufacturing. John is a true sensei who enthusiastically shares his knowledge and insights within the lean community, and with those who have not yet made the leap.

- What is Lean? http://www.lean.org/WhatsLean/

The term "lean production" refers to a complete business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, customer relations, and the overall enterprise that requires less human effort, less space, less capital, less material, and less time to make products with fewer defects to precise customer desires, compared with traditional management. Toyota pioneered lean management as a complete business system after World War II. During the late 1980s, a research team headed by Womack at MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program coined the term "lean" to describe Toyota's system.

About the Lean Enterprise Institute http://www.lean.org/WhoWeAre/LEINews.cfm

The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) was founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D. as a nonprofit research, education, publishing, and conferencing company with a mission to advance lean thinking around the world. We teach courses, hold management seminars, write and publish books and workbooks, and organize public and private conferences. We use the surplus revenues from these activities to conduct research projects and to support other lean initiatives such as the Lean Education Academic Network (www.teachinglean.org) and the Lean Global Network (www.leanglobal.org).

About James Womack
http://www.lean.org/WhoWeAre/LeanPerson.cfm?LeanPersonId=1