Are tool heads undermining your lean initiatives?

Some people think that lean is all about using tools. These people – they may be consultants, or they may be your own managers – may help you achieve some quick improvements that don’t last or prove to be less than hoped for.

 

We’d like to hear about your experience.

 

We asked author John Seddon to comment on this. His book, Freedom from Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service (Productivity Press, 2005), features a detailed criticism of tools and tool heads. His response:

 

“I am dismayed at how easily managers are duped into believing this lean thing is a ‘tools’ thing. Even the lean ‘gurus’ tell us Ohno insisted we should never codify method (write tools) but then they go ahead and do just that. Now, perhaps realizing the tools approach was flawed, the gurus are describing the tools thing as an ‘age’ and imploring us to go beyond the ‘tools age.’ They just don’t get it – Lean is a change-the-system thing, not a tools thing. The tool heads will ensure people miss an important opportunity – they will think they have ‘done lean’ if they have ‘done the tools’ and the tragedy is they won’t even have started. Watch out for tools from fools.”

 

Have you run into problems with tool heads? What happened? What did you do about it?

 

Or has a tools approach worked well in your organization? What made it successful?

 

Log into the blog and post a comment with your story. Let’s use the blog to help each other by sharing these experiences.

Let Chrysler Stand on Its Own

DaimlerChrysler wants to sell Chrysler, but anyone who would buy it should not buy it. What should DaimlerChrysler do?

            Before I address that question, let me explain the statement preceding it. Much of the media attention is focusing on the prospect of General Motors buying Chrysler. I haven’t found any commentator, analyst or other expert who thinks this is a good idea; quite the contrary, most people (myself included) think that one troubled company buying another is a terrible idea. The observation I like best comes from Jonathan Fahey, writing on Forbes.com, who says, “It's unclear how this plan would do anything positive for either company, or the U.S. auto industry.”

            Let’s assume for the moment that good sense will prevail and GM will not buy Chrysler. (A risky assumption, I know, but I like to be optimistic.) What then?

            Several major automakers have said they are not interested (good for them). I have seen speculation that some Chinese or Korean auto company might be interested, in order to gain an immediate presence in the U.S. market. I can understand why an Asian company might think that way. But this is also a bad idea.

            In some limited circumstances, a merger or acquisition can make sense. For example, one company might buy another to gain a complementary technology or business model it lacks. Microsoft has a long history of buying small companies for their technologies (although I think Microsoft has a long way to go in becoming a lean, well-run company). And the UPS takeover of Mailboxes gave it a retail presence it was missing.

            But merging simply to become bigger or grab a larger piece of the pie is rarely successful. (Can you say AOL-Time Warner?) Further, the Asian automakers that might do a deal with DaimlerChrysler generally lack the resources, management skill and, most important, lean track record that would allow them to successfully tackle the problems that still face Chrysler.

            I think it’s worthwhile to note that Toyota has never grown through acquisitions. When Toyota thought it necessary to add a brand to its portfolio, it created Lexus from scratch rather than buy another company. That doesn’t mean lean operators never buy other companies, but there have to be good strategic reasons for doing so beyond market share.

            I believe the best option is for DaimlerChrysler to spin off Chrysler into an independent company, or sell it to some new owners who simply want to run it independently – and not just because the original merger may have been a bad idea (which it may have been).

            Chrysler has made progress in the past in improving operations by adopting lean strategies, though it still has a long way to go. Being forced to stand on its own would not only intensify Chrysler’s burning platform for improvement, but it would also enable management to focus on improving the business rather than on making a merger or acquisition work – which can demand a lot of attention.

            The company could probably also use an influx of good, experienced lean executives, but that’s a separate matter.

            I have no idea how Wall Street would react to a spin-off of Chrysler, but that’s really not the issue. Spinning it off gives Chrysler the best opportunity to achieve genuine improvement. If that can be accomplished, the stock price will take care of itself.

            Chrysler should get its own house in order before it starts living with someone else.

 

A New Division for Healthcare

The growing interest in applying lean to healthcare has been widely reported, and it’s something I’ve previously written about here. Our latest news in this area is that Productivity Press is launching a new division, Healthcare Performance Press, specifically to serve the healthcare market.

 

 

           Our goal is to provide healthcare organizations with the kinds of meaningful resources on improvement they have come to expect from Productivity Press. Initially, we are offering a variety of books from Productivity Press and other sources. We have numerous new books in development, with the first releases scheduled in the next few months.

            We’re not focusing just on lean. We’re classifying the books into four categories: Lean Healthcare and Quality Management; Financial Management; Information Management, and Patient Safety and Quality. (The number of categories may grow over time.)

            On the HCP Press website, we’re also offering a variety of other resources, including links to articles, government agencies and conference sites, a white paper download, background information about lean, and RSS feeds of both healthcare-related news items and leading healthcare blogs.

            If you have any reaction to the new division or website, any thoughts on what subjects you’d like to see us address, or even a healthcare-related story you’d like to tell, we’d love to hear from you. Either contact me or email Kristine Mednansky, our senior acquisitions editor for healthcare, at kmednansky@productivitypress.com.

           

            By the way, I’ll be away tomorrow through the weekend, so my next posting won’t be until Monday. See you then.

 

How Toyota Thinks Today

How does Toyota think? Good insight into the answer comes from two recent experiences I’ve had. One was hearing a speech by a Toyota executive; the other was reading the cover story in The New York Times Magazine yesterday.

            The story, written by Jon Gertner, carries the headline “How Toyota Conquered the Car World.” Gertner gets it right. He focuses not on tools or methods, but overall strategy and approach.

He comments that “Toyota is as much a philosophy as a business.” Perhaps his most insightful statement in the lengthy article is when he says, “Toyota’s executives recognized early on that improving the process by which cars are designed and built is just as important as improving the vehicles themselves.” Toyota, Gertner says, is “different – in some deep, cellular way – from many American companies. Nothing in its DNA, to borrow a fashionable term among business-school academics, is focused on short-term gains.”

            The article won’t teach you the details of the Toyota Production System – that is not Gertner’s intent – but it is a good historical profile of how Toyota developed and what the company is all about.

            I also encountered the perfect embodiment of Toyota thinking when I heard a speech delivered at the recent Automotive News World Congress in Michigan by Jim Lentz, executive vice president of Toyota Motor Sales USA. (Lentz is one of the people quoted in Gertner’s article.)

            Lentz was not the only sales or marketing person to speak at the event. For example, Mike Jackson, vice president of marketing & advertising for GM North America, delivered an entertaining presentation on GM’s latest advertising approaches and its use of a range of media.

            But even though he is in sales, Lentz did not talk about advertising. He did not talk about marketing. He didn’t discuss media, new or old. He said nothing about sales. And he even said very little about product.

            Lentz talked about customers.

            He spoke at length about demographic trends, and what Toyota sees as the five generations of customers – “traditionals,” baby boomers, and generations X, Y and Z – who will all be seeking different things in cars and trucks.

            He discussed what he called the “new urbanism,” meaning the trend of people moving back into major cities, and how that is affecting what people want in vehicles.

            He talked about the strong movement toward living healthier and more environmentally conscious lives, which Toyota calls LOHAS – Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability. This has an impact both on product – i.e., demand for “green” vehicles such as hybrids – and on the need for Toyota to be a good corporate citizen.

            And Lentz discussed the effort Toyota makes to understand its customers. He specifically talked (as Gertner does in his article) about the research that went into development of the new Tundra truck:

 

            “Our Japanese and American designers, engineers and product planners didn’t just ‘go and see’ the market… they ‘lived the market.’

            You name it and they did it. I’m talking about customer visits to… construction sites… mining camps… ranches… farms… truck stops… tack stores… drilling operations… car carrier companies… and even the world’s largest snowplow manufacturer.

            We also sent them out for two weeks at a time in 5^th-wheel trailers on 1,000-mile camping trips where they did what typical American families do on vacation.

            They also spent time with personal and recreational use truckers… saw trailer hitches installed… hopped into cabs of big rigs… and even drank stale coffee in out-of-the-way diners.

            They did everything they could to live in the shoes of work customers and then used that knowledge in developing the next Tundra.

            For instance… during ranch visits… they noticed the difficulty drivers encountered while lining up their tow hitch with trailers they wanted to pull. Many needed another person on hand just to guide them through the process.

            So… on the new Tundra… we’ll offer an available wide-screen rear backup camera hidden in the tailgate handle to serve as an extra pair of eyes, making trailer hookups much easier and smoother.”

 

            Do all car companies send their people out on these kinds of road trips? I’d be surprised if they do.

            But perhaps the most telling point was when Lentz noted that, while Toyota this year is celebrating its 50^th anniversary of doing business in America, it wasn’t always a great success here. The first product introduced in America, the Toyopet Crown sedan, was a flop.

           

            “That fact is never far from my thoughts,” said Lentz. “I have a framed original brochure of that 1957 sedan hanging in my office. It reminds me that we’re NOT invincible… that we must always listen to our customers… and always consider what they want.”

 

            A never-ending focus on the customer combined with a relentless determination to avoid complacency and never be satisfied. That is what a lean strategy is all about – and that is why Toyota has indeed conquered the car world.

 

Visual Controls in a Hospital

Most people are aware of the burgeoning movement to apply lean principles to healthcare. A company called Awarix has come up with an intriguing use of technology in support of that effort.

Awarix has created what it calls patient care visibility systems. Simply put, it is a use of technology to create visual controls in a hospital, through an electronic whiteboard – in effect, a kind of andon board.

The picture shown here is an example of what one of these boards looks like. The diagram is a layout of patient rooms on a hospital floor, with color coding to distinguish different situations. Green might signify an inpatient, turquoise an observation patient, yellow a patient scheduled for discharge. Letters can signify patient alerts; for example, the “R” on the room on the left could indicate results of tests – or if it were a different color, abnormal results or critical results.

Information is communicated through location technology, such as ultrasound and radio frequency identification (RFID). The whiteboards are placed throughout the hospital, and the system can provide status information on more than 75 clinical and administrative processes.

Customers of Awarix include Ascension Health in St. Louis, Catholic Healthcare West in San Francisco, Tenet Healthcare in Dallas and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.

According to Awarix, the system at St. Vincent’s – part of a broader capacity management improvement program – helps turn over medical-surgical beds more efficiently, which means patients don’t have to be held in the emergency department while they wait for beds. Neeysa Biddle, president of St. Vincent’s, said this resulted in a significant decrease in hospital-wide diversion hours.

An Awarix system is also used at Southeast Alabama Medical Center in Dothan, Alabama. Fran Gappa, a nursing supervisor there, said, “We can just look at the board and know that the patient is a myocardial infection patient. So, we know that certain tasks need to be carried out to make sure that the patient is receiving the highest quality care. It makes it much easier for us to intuitively know what needs to be done.”

That, of course, is what visual controls are all about.

The system seems like a good idea, and a clever strategy by Awarix to seize a market opportunity. I hope we see more approaches like it.

A Professor Misunderstands Kaizen

Sometimes, even smart people just don’t get it.

            A university professor has written a column in The New York Times suggesting that the Web is proving to be the ideal environment for a kaizen approach. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand what kaizen is.

            Hal Varian, professor of business, economics and information at the University of California, Berkeley, describes kaizen as “a disciplined process of systematic exploration, controlled experimentation and then painstaking adoption of the new procedures.”

            Not exactly. Our LeanSpeak dictionary defines kaizen as “the gradual, incremental and continual improvement of activities so as to create more value and less non-value-adding waste.”

            To the uninformed, the differences may seem subtle. However, the key point that Varian misses is the underlying lean focus on improvement, on adding value, on eliminating waste.

To illustrate his point about the Web, Varian notes that “it is simple to run a controlled experiment with a Web page. Amazon can show a different page layout to every hundredth visitor and determine in a few days whether the new design increases sales.”

            That’s true. And that kind of experimentation can be very valuable to a business.

            But if you try a variety of Web page layouts, then pick the one that produces the most sales, how is that kaizen? What waste has been eliminated? What process has been improved? One Web page – or more broadly, one marketing strategy – may be more effective than another, but finding a more effective marketing approach is not in of itself process improvement.

            There are undoubtedly ways in which the speed and flexibility of the Web are being used for continuous improvement. The technology can make it possible to, for example, eliminate process steps, reduce cycle time or increase throughput. That’s a point that Varian could have made, but didn’t.

            Varian is an accomplished professional and the author not only of a monthly column in the Times, but also of many books, most having to do with economics and/or information technology.         

            He is not an authority on lean. I would suggest that he study the subject further before he tries to speak like one.

 

What is Wrong at General Motors

I’m beginning to think the problem at General Motors, one of the largest enterprises in the world, is that they don’t think like one enterprise. They are so large, with so many different divisions and operations, that their approach to improvement is piecemeal. And they think their customers won’t see this.

            My comment is prompted by a small snafu surrounding a recent posting on the GM FastLane blog. Brian McVeigh, general manager of GMNA Field Sales, Service & Parts, described what he termed “great news” that had been announced at the annual conference of the National Automobile Dealers Association.

            The news was that, beginning March 5, GM will offer a 100,000-miles-or-five-years powertrain warranty and 24-hour roadside assistance on all 2002-2006 Certified Used Vehicles. McVeigh commented that the new plan “has many features in common with the new vehicle warranty we announced last year.”

            Well, not everything in common. While both warranties offer 100,000-mile coverage, the new-car warranty begins with 2007 models.

            Some people find this approach a bit inconsistent, to put it mildly. Several unhappy comments were posted on the blog. One person wrote:

 

            “So let me get this straight. If I trade in my 2004 Pontiac GXP and it qualifies as a 'Certified Used Car' it will have a 5yr/100,000 warranty upon resale, is that right? Yet while I own it, I don't have that same warranty!?!?! Is there something wrong with this picture or am I blind?... Don't you think it would be wise to show some appreciation to those of us that currently own GM vehicles, that are not covered by this warranty, and have kept them in 'Certified Used Car' condition?!? After all, those 'Certified Used Cars' must come from somewhere!!

 

            Another writer looked at the situation more broadly:

 

            “While the warranty support is a forward step for GM, the company remains far off the right track of bringing cars to the market that are affordable, look good, and have 'real' substance. For example, when GM pushes a car like the Impala as a winning model, I question if you have any clue about how to really beat the competition. The Impala is sadly lacking. Take a look at Honda's design for its current Civic, its upcoming 2008 Accord or its Fit/Jazz model. The Fit alone is better than the majority of GM's lineup… Does GM understand how to build identity and an audience from the ground floor and grow it? From the look of things, sadly, you still don't get it. The one GM car I would consider is the Pontiac Vibe...or should I say Pontiac Toyota.

 

            There’s more, but you get the idea.

            In the original post, McVeigh wrote, “Our customers expect quality. We hear you, and we’re delivering it.”

            I’m not sure what GM is hearing. But it seems their listening skills (not to mention their understanding of what customers perceive as value) leave a lot to be desired.

 

   UPDATE: While I generally agree with both of the comments quoted above, I discovered something related to the second writer's criticism of GM pushing the Impala as a winning model. Forbes automotive columnist Jerry Flint, in a recent column, notes that, in fact, the Impala just about beats the Honda Accord and trails only the Toyota Camry in sales of vehicles in its class. (Flint also makes the point that GM doesn't seem to know what to do with the Impala.)

 

Lean Publishing

Kevin Meyer, in a recent posting on the Evolving Excellence blog, discussed how he and Bill Waddell are using a “print on demand” company for publication of their new book.

            I find that to be an interesting topic, at least partly because of the obvious fact that Productivity Press is a publishing company.

In addition, print on demand – in which books are literally printed one at a time, as needed – is a good example of what any company hopes to achieve by implementing lean principles.

However, most of what we do does not involve print on demand, with good reason.

            How many copies we print of any given book is based on how many books we expect to sell – and our print runs are conservative. (We outsource the actual printing.) While one goal of lean is to minimize or eliminate inventory, we need inventory on hand for the volume of orders we expect to receive. We sell a significant number of books to resellers, from Amazon.com to companies you haven’t heard of, and they may require large quantities.

(Projecting sales may be less of a concern when authors self-publish their book, meaning they pay a company to print it. That’s what Kevin and Bill are doing. We are a traditional publisher, meaning we contract with authors whose books we believe will sell enough copies to make a profit.)

We do use print-on-demand companies for short print runs – fewer than 100 books, for example. We might do that if we’re running low on inventory but don’t need a large quantity. I don’t believe we’ve ever ordered just one book.

            But for the most part, print on demand isn’t as economical for us; the difference in per-unit cost between bulk quantities and print-on-demand can be significant.

            Could the overall printing process be improved by applying lean principles? I’m sure it could. Since we outsource the printing, it’s not a process that we control. We’re also a small company, so we have limited influence over any printer.

As time goes on, I suspect that some smart printer or printers will adopt lean principles, finding ways to reduce the per-unit cost of small print runs so they become more competitive for traditional publishers. That will bring us closer to the true lean ideal of print on demand. We look forward to that day.

 

The Baldrige Award Controversy

A controversy has arisen over a recipient of the 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Today’s posting, commenting on the controversy, is written by Mark Graham Brown, author of Baldrige Award Winning Quality.

            First, some background: The 2006 Baldrige Award Recipients, announced in November, included Premier Inc., a major healthcare consulting and services organization owned by not-for-profit hospitals and health systems organizations.

            The Baldrige announcement, in addition to mentioning Premier’s achievements in finances, retention of hospital members and career development of employees, also said Premier “has taken a leadership role in promoting best practices in ethical conduct, transparency, and accountability within its industry.”

            Premier has been accused of taking legal kickbacks from big medical manufacturers to unfairly suppress competition. The day before the awards were announced, Premier agreed to pay $8.8 million to settle a lawsuit involving catheter maker Rochester Medical. Other lawsuits are pending. Premier CEO Richard Norling is on the board of the Baldrige Foundation, which raises money for the award.

            Some critics – including Dale Crownover, president and CEO of Texas Nameplate Co., former chairman of the Baldrige foundation and writer of The Baldrige Blog (not connected to the award) – have suggested the award to Premier was improper and should be rescinded.

            In addition to the Baldrige book, Mark Graham Brown is author of Keeping Score, Winning Score, Get It, Set It, Move It, Prove It and Beyond the Balanced Scorecard. Here are his comments:

 

Once again the Baldrige Award and criteria are the subject of some strong criticism and debate.  One of the past year's winners is accused of resorting to unethical practices regarding its competitors and suppliers.  Another CEO of a two-time Baldrige winner has, for some reason, soured on the award program and has created his own blog that bashes the award and the criteria.  The power of the internet has given everyone the ability to voice their own opinions that can be read by thousands via their own personal blogs or web pages. 

 

Is the Baldrige process flawed?  Certainly it is.  Baldrige examiners do not talk to customers, stakeholders, competitors, and there is a lot of data that might be relevant that does not get collected.  A more thorough analysis would certainly reveal more information about the strengths and weaknesses of an organization.  Such an approach, however, would make the cost of the assessment so high that hardly anyone would pay for it.

 

 There is no foolproof way of assessing the health of an organization. The process and the criteria, however, are the most comprehensive and widely accepted model for evaluating organizations.  Most other countries have their own version of the award that follows the Baldrige criteria and process to the letter.  The examiners and judges involved in the award are selected from thousands of applicants and have generally already had experience as a state examiner or leader of a major organization.  Examiners are very well trained, and there is a strict code of ethics for the program that is followed very strictly.  The team consensus scoring process makes it highly unlikely that any individual can exert bias or inappropriate influence on the scores or selection of winners.

 

Every single critic of the award or criteria during the past 20 years has failed to suggest an alternative set of standards or process for assessing the health of an organization.  The process and criteria are not perfect and the evaluation process is not without gaps. It is, however, light years ahead of other award programs that are mostly subjective popularity contests judged by a good-old-boy network of CEOs and leaders that look at stock prices and profits to assess the performance of an organization. 

 

If you compare the Baldrige Award to any other business or professional organization award program, you will not find a single program that is as comprehensive, thorough, or objective as the Baldrige.

 

 

Old Infrastructure is an Obstacle to Lean Supply Chains

            For a supply chain to become lean, every part of the supply chain has to work properly. (The same is true in manufacturing; the whole point of total productive maintenance is to eliminate machinery downtime.)

            The problem today with automotive supply chains is that they don’t work properly. That’s one of the things I learned at the Automotive News World Congress recently – along with the fact that the problems cannot be fixed simply by applying lean principles.

            Alan DeCarr, group vice president of Toyota Logistics Services, presented some disturbing information during his presentation. And the problems he described, which I’ll get to in a moment, are exacerbated by increasing demand for his group’s services.

            Last year, sales grew faster than Toyota’s expanding domestic production capacity, and imports – meaning the company’s marine shipments – increased by 44 percent. Rail deliveries increased 11 percent, and trucking volume was up 14 percent.

            Rail deliveries are a particular problem, with an on-time performance last year of only 78 percent and quality performance of 0.24 percent. Ironically, that is partly because the U.S. economy has been healthy, contributing to overall rail congestion.

            In addition, DeCarr said, the rail industry has a continuing shortage of rail cars designed for hauling automobiles, particularly trilevel cars.

            To address these rail issues, DeCarr said Toyota is involved in network rationalization (exploring alternatives), working to ensure that haulaway companies keep rail ramps fluid, and working to ensure that loading and unloading occurs efficiently. On that last point, he said, the lean tool of heijunka is being applied, and operations have been altered to load certain destinations on designated days (based on RR requests).

            DeCarr also noted that, for shipping vehicles from Japan to the U.S., Toyota uses both young and old ships. An old ship might leave Japan, followed by a new ship, on schedule, two days later. But the new ship travels faster, so the two ships might arrive here at the same time – creating unloading problems. “When you don’t have that heijunka, that even flow… it all gets expensive,” DeCarr said. (Despite that, Toyota’s marine shipments had an on-time delivery rate of 98 percent last year, with quality performance of 0.04 percent.)

            Meanwhile, trucking companies are having a tough time, hit by downward pricing pressure, aging equipment and driver shortages. The two largest auto carriers filed for bankruptcy last year.

            To help, DeCarr said his group is trying to offer fair rates that support reinvestment, equipment financing and network rationalization. He added, “we’ve expanded the use of Toyota-branded carriers as appropriate.” Also, Toyota is implementing soft tie-down haulaway trailers, which can simplify truckers’ operations and improve driver ergonomics. With the soft tie-downs, vehicle designers don’t need to allow for clearance for traditional chain tie-downs.

            Other comments at the conference came from Christopher Connor, president (Americas) of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics.

            Connor noted that not every shipping problem is actually a shipping problem. In some cases, “what might appear to be a logistics problem is an internal situation,” he commented. For example, a manufacturer will have finished cars on the ground but be unable to release them because of a problem involving quality, finance, or the vehicle not being allocated to a particular region. When release finally occurs, that causes a very un-heijunka-like surge.

            However, Connor agreed with DeCarr about the problems of infrastructure.

            “What keeps me awake is the concern over the future,” he said. “There has not been investment in automobile transport equipment. It’s a big problem.”

 

Lean and The Long Tail

            A while back I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of the best-selling book The Long Tail. He also writes a blog on the topic of the book.

            Anderson’s thesis stems from the fact that Internet technology makes it possible for online sellers to offer a far broader range of products than brick-and-mortar stores. What this means (besides consumers having more choices) is that the future of business is selling many more products, but each in a smaller quantity. And it means that “blockbuster,” best-selling products (which will still exist) won’t reach the level of sales of past blockbusters. Those past records were set, Anderson argues, at least partly because consumers were buying blockbusters because they didn’t know about many other choices – which has now changed.

            Anderson offers plenty of compelling evidence in support of his arguments, but the evidence is hardly necessary. We now understand the Internet to a degree that makes the sheer common sense of the trend he describes is clearly evident. (And that’s not meant as a criticism of the book. Sometimes the value of a book lies in articulating realities, in helping us look beyond the forest to see the trees.)

            So what does this have to do with lean? Quite a bit, actually.

            First, as manufacturers and producers increasingly find themselves required to make a higher mix of low-volume products, they must adapt their methods so the per-unit cost of production is no greater for a low-volume product than for one made in high volumes. (That was the theme of an earlier posting on Lean Strategies in a Low-Volume World.) This requires the kind of waste elimination and continuous improvement that a lean strategy provides.

            (It may also require a shift in thinking about lean, which some people mistakenly think only works in high-volume environments.)

            Second, the Internet buyers of low-volume products are typically dispersed across broad geographic areas, or even across the globe, a distribution reality that requires a super-efficient supply chain. Here, too, you need commitment to a lean strategy to achieve that efficiency.

            Third, one of the great benefits of lean is that frees up production capacity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean capacity to produce greater volume of your existing products. It can also mean capacity to produce new products – which is what you need in the world of the Long Tail.

            I could go on, but I think you see my point.

The subtitle of Anderson’s book is “Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” To make that future a reality, you need to be lean.