Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions

The new and revised edition of this modern day classic provides the critical piece that will make any lean transformation a dynamic continuous success. It shows you how to implement a transformation that cannot fail by developing a culture that will have all your stakeholders involved in the process and invested in the outcome. It will teach you how to build success from the top down and the bottom up at the same time. If you are a leader at any level in an organization undergoing or considering a lean transformation, this is where you should start and finish … and start again.

Praise for the First Edition of the Shingo Prize Winning International Bestseller. . .

… an excellent review of one of the most common implementation issues in a lean transformation -- the essential day to day work practices of team leaders/supervisors/value stream managers that enable the lean system.
-- George Koenigsaecker, President, Lean Investments, LLC

. . . reprinted seven times

The purpose of lean systems is to make problems glaringly obvious. If implementation does not include standard leadership and cultural support systems to constantly address problems, the point of the system is missed. Many books address lean tools and initial conversion, but if you want the system to stick, read David's book.
--Robert (Doc) Hall, Editor-In-Chief, Target, Association for Manufacturing Excellence

. . . now being translated into Russian, Thai, and Chinese…

Mann's book is an excellent start toward Lean Leadership as 'process-dependent' rather than 'person-dependent' in style.
--Ross E. Robson, Executive Director, Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing

Now empowered with five more years of accumulated knowledge and experience, David Mann’s seminal work:

• Offers new insights on applications of lean management in administrative, technical, and professional environments
• Provides new guidance on how to begin implementing lean management in discrete manufacturing, office, and process manufacturing environments.
• Details specifics on how to engage executives through gemba walks*
• Shows the difference between measuring improvement through results and through processes
• Adds new case studies throughout
• Expands the lean management assessment based on actual use, and now offers up two separate versions (both available online) one for manufacturing and one for administrative, technical, and professional settings

*In a gemba walk, a teacher, or sensei, and student walk the production floor. The teacher asks the student to tell what he or she sees and, depending on the answer, asks more questions to stimulate the student to think differently about what is in front of him or her. This includes learning to see what is not there…Gemba walks often include assignments to act on what the student has come to see. …

David Mann is currently the principal of David Mann Lean Consulting. During a 21-year career with Steelcase, Mann developed and applied the concepts of a Lean management system. In his service with the company, he supported 40+ Lean value stream transformations, as well as developing and leading an internal team that completed over 100 successful office and product development Lean business process conversions.

Mann’s teaching and coaching experience includes Lean transformation in manufacturing, enterprise business processes, and healthcare organizations. His practice includes Lean and Lean management implementation in production and enterprise business processes, troubleshooting stalled Lean initiatives, as well as frequent training and speaking engagements on Lean management.

Mann is the author of Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to sustain Lean Conversions. Awarded the Shingo Prize in 2006, the book is now in its eighth printing, and is being translated into Chinese, Russian, and Thai.

Mann serves as a Shingo Prize examiner and assessor for the Honda Lean Network. He is a member of the Saint Mary’s Healthcare Lean Transformation Advisory Board in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is an invited contributor to Frontiers of Health Services Management. Mann is a frequent contributor to and member of the editorial board of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence’s publication Target, edits Target’s Single Point Lessons feature, and also serves on the board of AME’s Great Lakes Region. He is a faculty member in the Operations Management program at the Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University.

Mann is an organizational psychologist, earning his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1976.