Lean Manufacturing Books

A Handful of Recommended Books About Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is the emerging trend nowadays for maximization of productivity among companies and firms.


Because today’s time is so hard, with almost every company around the world suffering from narrowing margins and operation losses, major and established giant firms acknowledge and start implementing lean manufacturing strategies within their businesses.

However, lean manufacturing is a discipline, an approach that should be carefully studied before implemented in the workplace. Taking a closer look at it and its operational nature will ensure the attainment of desired benefits from lean manufacturing.

Because lean manufacturing is a helpful set of strategies and business operational techniques, it would be helpful if managers, employers, entrepreneurs and even the most common workers know about it.

In this regard, here are some of the best and most helpful books that are recommended if you want to study, look at and know more about lean manufacturing.

These books are available on your nearest book stands. These lean manufacturing books are also available online, so log in and check them out through your reliable and favorite online shopping Web site.

“5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace”

A book authored by Japanese expert Hiroyuki Hirano and translated by Bruce Talbot, “5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace” gives pertinent outlook and information about the visual workplace.

“5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace” touches and focuses on the widely popular 5S’s principle, which are being used currently worldwide. These are seiri or organization, seiton or orderliness, seiso or cleanliness, seiketsu or standardized cleanup and shitsuke or discipline.

The Japanese 5S clearly and obviously outlines the approaches behind the ever-reliable lean manufacturing techniques. Apparently, the two workplace concepts are interrelated with each other because both aim to maximize productivity by eliminating wastes and wasteful practices.

“5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace” also offers a number of significant and related case studies that include 5S training materials and graphic demonstrations and illustrations.

“New Manufacturing Challenge”

This book details and outlines the competitive techniques and strategies successfully implemented and adopted by successful and giant global companies in the past two decades.

Authored by another Japanese researcher, Kiyoshi Suzaki, “New Manufacturing Challenge” focuses on manufacturing firms and provides recommendations on how these companies can boost production efficiency.

“New Manufacturing Challenge” is very much recommended specifically for manufacturing and production specialists.

“Just Another Car Factory?”

The book is written by Christopher Huxley, James Rinehart and David Robertson.

“Just Another Car Factory?” demonstrates the effective implementation and use of lean manufacturing techniques by taking the example of the CAMI Automotive.

CAMI Automotive is a joint car making business of US-based General Motors and Japan’s Suzuki. It is understood that CAMI Automotive has developed and adopted one of the most effective lean production facilities.

By taking a closer look and conducting a case study of the company, the authors have successfully come up with a book that touches mainly on lean manufacturing, including the aspects of sociology, labor, human resources management and industrial relations.

“Lean Manufacturing Implementation”

“Lean Manufacturing Implementation” is a sequential and step-by-step informative reading about implementation of lean manufacturing techniques in businesses.

The lean manufacturing book is authored by Dennis Hobbs and co-published by CPIM and APICS. “Lean Manufacturing Implementation” was published in October 2003.

The book enumerates comprehensible and understandable transformation of manufacturing businesses into productive ones using lean manufacturing techniques.

“Lean Manufacturing Implementation” is written in a manner that readers will surely easily understand the techniques and description due to the simple words, vocabularies and sentence structures used by the author.

“Lean Manufacturing Implementation” also tackles common problems and concerns arising from the implementation of lean manufacturing techniques as well as effective and recommended solutions to address these lean manufacturing issues.

“What is Lean Six Sigma”

“What is Lean Six Sigma” is written by Bill Kastle, David T Rowlands and Michael George.

This lean manufacturing book focuses on the integration of the Lean Six Sigma, which practically and effectively combines the principles of improving work (through the use of the paradigm of the so-called workplace Six Sigma) and faster work (through using and implementing key lean manufacturing principles).

“What is Lean Six Sigma” will surely be an easy reading, but informative, because the authors employed the plain-English style of book writing.