The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road

Hitchhikers do not travel a fixed path. They intentionally wander so they can learn and grow along the way. Embarking on the lean journey is similar, there are many roads on which to wander and no single one is right for all. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road reveals the most critical lessons learned over the authors' combined 30-plus years of exploring the lean highways.

One of the book's lessons from the road is you need to pay attention to where you are and where you are going, just as you do when driving a car. Lean leaders add value by changing things, moving them forward, and producing different results than the day before. To lead, you must go beyond creating a vision. You must develop the vehicle that will deliver it. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean is the vehicle that will help you move beyond the tools and take lean to a self-sustaining and continuously improving level.

Over ten chapters you'll cover lean principles and thinking, lean leadership moves, the roadmap for lean transformation, common pitfalls of lean journeys, building an operating system, lean accounting, lean material management, lean in service organizations, and how individuals can apply lean to improve themselves. The book concludes with interviews of lean practitioners on the front lines of change at Chrysler, Ross Controls, DTE Energy, RSR Corporation, and Nemak.