James P. Womack

“In the industry, the typical product development cycle is about one year and consists of a number of product clinics followed by…

— James P. Womack

“because of the focus on perfection, to be further explored in Chapter 5, the whole system is maintained in a permanent creative…

— James P. Womack

“However, what appears to be efficient to individual companies along the stream—for example, purchase of one of the world’s fastest canning machines,…

— James P. Womack

“We labeled this new way lean production because it does more and more with less and less.”

— James P. Womack

“The types of activities which people all over the world consistently report as most rewarding—that is, which make them feel best—involve a…

— James P. Womack

“Classic batch-and-queue work conditions are hardly conducive to psychological flow. The worker can see only a small part of the task, there…

— James P. Womack

“By design, flow systems have an everything-works-or-nothing-works quality which must be respected and anticipated.”

— James P. Womack

“If Tesco wants to shrink costs and improve the reliability of the 85 percent of the value stream it does not directly…

— James P. Womack

“muda of complexity.”

— James P. Womack

“Raising awareness of the tight connection between sales and production also helps guard against one of the great evils of traditional selling…

— James P. Womack

“Perhaps, just as the individual steps in the value stream are incomprehensible in isolation, customers do not really want to shop for…

— James P. Womack

“downstream manufacturing operations often had too many parts (the muda of overproduction) or too few parts to meet the production schedule (producing…

— James P. Womack

“let’s just reemphasize the critical leap in embracing value stream thinking: Stop looking at aggregated activities and isolated machines—the smelter, the rolling…

— James P. Womack

“the value stream for specific products in a search for muda. To do this we have started to map out every step—each…

— James P. Womack

“Stated another way, most of the economic world, at any given time, is a brownfield of traditional activities performed in traditional ways.…

— James P. Womack

“we have developed the following simple rules of thumb: Converting a classic batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with effective pull by…

— James P. Womack

“the need to include employees of key component and material supply firms as dedicated members of the product team raises difficult questions…

— James P. Womack

“Dedicated product teams in direct dialogue with customers always find ways to specify value more accurately and often learn of ways to…

— James P. Womack

“In the end, most MRP applications were better than manual systems, but they operated day to day at a level of performance…

— James P. Womack

“Could the customs authorities in Crete have your passport scanned at check-in in London and use the hours you are en route…

— James P. Womack

“The precise techniques will vary with the application, but the key principle does not: Everyone involved must be able to see and…

— James P. Womack

Converting a classic batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with effective pull by the customer will double labor productivity all the way…

— James P. Womack

“the customer only pays for exactly what she or he feels is really needed.”

— James P. Womack

“It’s also essential that many traditionally massive machines—paint systems being the most critical in the bike case—be “right-sized” to fit directly into…

— James P. Womack

“we concluded that lean thinking can be summarized in five principles: precisely specify value by specific product, identify the value stream for…

— James P. Womack