Practically Lean

Practically Lean

Practically Lean is an extremely practical and valuable guide to LEAN transformation. It provides the experience, insight and resources that you might expect to have assembled after a 3 month LEAN transformation wave run by a top management consultancy firm at a cost of £21.99!

The book is written as part handbook, part toolkit, part fictional account of a LEAN transformation set in a hair salon. I suspect that it is at the owners of such small businesses that Barnes is really targeting his work, where the difficulties of leading and managing a business are becoming a serious headache for owner- managers more concerned with the technical challenges of their work.

Where Barnes excels is in not succumbing to the LEAN as a religious exercise in process management and KPIs. Instead the goal of meeting the needs of the customer is planted firmly at the centre of his LEAN framework. Further the mindset, behaviours and personal development of the team as the key driver for meeting those needs. This is a powerful combination and the author gets the emphasis just right.

Finally the books comes with a very handy set of Excel based tools to support a LEAN implementation which make the book unbelievable value for money. How LEAN is that !