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Summary: Entertaining and Compelling, a unique perspective on Toyota
Review: Michael Kennedy has created a most entertaining and informative book which explores an, heretofore, unexplored aspect of why Toyota, and companies like Toyota, excel at bringing new products to market with 4 times the efficiency of their North American competitors. The book is written in a fictionalized style, ala "The Goal", and conveys the philosophies and paradigms that Toyota embraces which set them apart, in time-to-market and profits, even in this post-bubble economy. Kennedy draws from his life experiences, both as an organizational developer of concurrent engineering processes at a Fortune 100 company, and from his involvement with a National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) collaboration which studied and documented this subject. His volume chronicles how IRT Industries, struggles with their product development processes, their discovery of how Toyota uses knowledge-based paradigms, and how IRT grudgingly realizes that major paradigms shifts, not process changes nor process compliance is required to be a world class product development company. And, maybe best of all, he provides a detailed plan and methodology by which enlightened companies can implement what they learn from this volume.
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Summary: Thought Provoking Mental Nourishment
Review: Michael Kennedy's book, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise, gives an experienced insight into the dilemma faced by some of North America's largest organizations, those who have embraced management science in all of its complexity to win national awards, only to find they are unable to compete successfully at the customer level. Using an engaging fictional narrative, Kennedy provides a fresh insight into product development; this book will challenge your beliefs and understanding and likely intrigue you sufficiently to investigate how aspects of the process can be made applicable in your enterprise. It is a treasure trove of information on, not just its principal topic, Toyota's unique product development process, but details on establishing and operating "a process renewal team" and "large group interventions for organizational change". In Michael Kennedy's very readable book, one is introduced to Toyota's design concepts, unconventional to the majority of us in corporate North America. Imagine your product development process stipulating:
•explore not one, but multiple design solutions at the same time;
•delay the design's narrowing process to as late as possible in the process;
•demand the building and testing of multiple design models and prototypes for performance conformity;
•have the development, retention and reuse of engineering knowledge and skills a top priority for the company;
•eliminate the use of complex integrated task based program and plans by delegating each program designer to prepare his/her own time-lines to meet fixed review dates and performance levels; and
•have functional engineering managers focus on teaching and mentoring engineering talent, not administration. In addition to product development, Kennedy's book gives the reader an overview of change management issues from strategy, to personal and political conflict, to presentation and implementation tactics. The book stimulates thought; it proposes possibilities; it gives a glimpse into the future of an enlightened company's product development process. It is beyond a wake-up-call; it is mental nourishment to everyone whose enterprise relies on engineered products.
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Summary: An easy read that will cause long term mental gymnastics
Review: What a wonderful read! I actually felt excited while reading it; it kept me up until 2:30am to finish in a single sitting. The format alternates between a chapter of fictional story, and a chapter of the author's commentary on the story and how it applies to the broader picture.
This is one of the few emerging practical books that discusses solutions to the productivity of knowledge workers. Drucker would be proud, I think. Businesses that manage engineers, artists, or product designers tend to be based on the original theory of management: Frederick Taylor's. This approach is largely based on manual labour -- making and moving things. Knowledge work isn't like that. You can't make knowledge workers productive by directing them, because by definition they will have more specialized knowledge about their contribution than you, as a manager, ever will!
Lean thinking really is about recognizing this "third wave" of management: first, there was task analysis. Then, we focused on business process engineering. Now, we look specifically at knowledge and value creation.
Lean thinking at its core is only 4 principles: add nothing but value (eliminate waste), center on the people who add value, flow value from demand (defer decisions), and optimize across the organization.
This book explains these principles as applied to product development -- which is quite different than lean production.
It really should have the same business impact that Goldratt's THE GOAL had back in the 1980's, if more would take notice.
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