Taiichi Ohnos Workplace Management: Special 100th Birthday Edition 1st Edition

Taiichi Ohno's workplace management used to be pretty hard to get, but John Miller re-translated and re-published it so now it's available for a larger audience. The book contains content from some spoken interviews, so that makes it somewhat strange to read, at least in the beginning, but makes it actually nice.This small book actually contains 38 chapters or which every one is one or two pages. Some of the chapters are extremely insightful in the way of thinking Taiichi Ohno used when thinking up ideas for the Toyota Production System. In this review I won't be able to go over all, so just highlight some point I really liked and remembered:- Misconceptions Hidden within Common Sense explains that common sense is often actually not the right way of thinking and that you should follow your uncommon sense and try to think outside the accepted standard way of thinking (common sense)- In "Wasted motion is not work" he explains that people make a mistake by thinking that "being at work" or "moving" you are actually "working". People ought to separate these so that they can improve their actual work.- He makes strong points to make sure you make a difference between machine time and person time. If the machine is running then that's machine time and the person who is operating the machine can then do something different.- In "Pitfall of cost calculations" he tries to show that you can prove whatever with cost calculations and that thats probably not the right way to make the decisions.These are just examples of the huge amount of wisdom written in this small book. It's absolutely recommended and one of the books that I will re-read again and again to refresh my memory.An absolute must.

This book is - as mentioned bij others - a remarkable object, coming from one of the founder fathers of Toyota's Lean Adventure. The book is not written by him, but is the result of several discussions (or monologues) from Ohno. As such it is already possible to use as a study of Ohno himself.However,I suppose that Ohno-san would not like to be a hero or a white knight. This is not lean thinking, where the real hero's are those who add real value to the endcustomer.So, this book is of no help if you have not yet experienced by yourself what lean is or could be. Only when you experienced the long road to lean horizons, you can appreciate the thinkings and concerns of this man. This book will help you to reflect more deeply on problems and solutions. It will make it clear that lean is not an endpoint but a resentless never-ending marathon. Enjoy and suffer!

I plan to study for a Six Sigma Green Belt soon, and I thought preparing by reading some of the process improvement classics would be a good way to get a background for the vocabulary and ideas that started it all. Of course, this book is one of those in that canon. While the thoughts that the words represent are enlightening at best, fun at worst, the translation is awful.THE CONTENT -- Awesome! If you want to learn about ways of thinking and give them names so that you can articulate the ideas to other people, this book is great! I loved how Ohno uses real examples from his life (or made up ones in his mind) and Japanese or Toyota history to make his points more tangible. He shows us ways of thinking to "reduce cost" (i.e., get fit or "lean") north strategically (e.g., Supermarket System = Just in Time = kanban) and operationally (start with a base standard and allow workers to improve upon them, a.k.a., kaizen). I am not sure if I have all of the ideas correct after my first reading, but it was definitely can start a mind on the right path toward improvement.WRITING STYLE -- The main points of this book are repeated and developed many times in many ways over the course of this book, which made it a study for me because that is not a typical way that North Americans write (a more cut-to-the-point style). I found myself having to read it like I read "The Silmarillion" by Tolkien (i.e., as I read I had to remember and reference earlier pages so that I could understand the terminology and see how the points were developed). So, it was tiring to really understand, but the effort is really worthwhile!TRANSLATION -- Problematic English, for example plenty of "this" (a demonstrative adjective, not a noun) without a noun afterward make the book confusing and lead me to question "this what?" In addition (and ironically in a book about trimming the fat) did not think about economy of word usage: plenty of sentences, even if they preserve the exact words of the author, do nothing to support points and actually make the book harder to read, which I do not believe is in the spirit of what Ohno was trying to accomplish by making the chapters so short. In short, it appears to me that the translator was probably not an Ohno expert but more of just a person who happened to be literate in Japanese and English. My guess is that the translator's native language is Japanese, because the grammar problems I mention above suggest limited English proficiency.

While no one person invented lean, no one is given more credit than Taiichi Ohno. Access to his true thoughts and ideas are rare, and this book is the best and most useful of Ohno's work. Many lean students would want nothing more than to spend a day with Taiichi Ohno walking through their plant. This book is the closest thing we have left to that experience. Jon Miller has done a diligent job not just in translation but ensuring that the true meaning comes through in a readable fashion. You truly feel as if you are in conversation with the father of the Toyota Production System. While this book won't paint a clear picture of what to do next on your lean journey, it should be required reading for any serious student of the subject.

For those who want to savor the wisdom of kaizen lean from the Source

As a production Engineer this book is so closed to me. We need to challange the way we think and always make things better. The books is a great way to understand deeper Lean, TPS. Read it especially if you are in production process involving manual workers!!