Lean Thinkers' Library answers your questions about a lean transformation by putting a repository of indispensable lean knowledge on one shelf — plus it saves you money. You get:

The Gold Mine - our first lean novel deftly weaves together the technical and human pieces of implementing lean manufacturing in an engaging story that readers will find both compelling and instructive. The Gold Mine presents all the key lean principles, ranging from well-known ideas such as pull and flow, to lesser-known yet equally important principles such as jidoka and heijunka. The book also reveals lean as a system to show how the principles are interrelated and how they lead to useful tools such as kanban or 5S. The principles are explained in the context of a realistic human story about managers and employees struggling to apply these tools and ideas in a successful turnaround.

A Leader’s Study Guide to the Gold Mine – a guide for individual readers and lean leaders and their management teams. It’s designed to make The Gold Mine a book that can be read and discussed, thereby making it a catalyst for organizational change. In the absence of a skilled sensei to guide in lean transformation, this guide to The Gold Mine offers helpful chapter summaries, important discussion points, and additional recommended resources for readers.

Lean Thinking (expanded 2nd edition) — breaks down the concepts of lean into real nuts-and-bolts language. It explains the benefits of a lean business system and offers actionable advice so you can champion a lean transformation. Written in a straightforward style, the book describes lean’s main elements, tools, and thought processes, gives specific manufacturing examples from a variety of industries, explores the common obstacles, and offers an Action Plan to help you develop and implement the lean transformation.

Lean Solutions - the groundbreaking follow-up to Lean Thinking, written in the same clear, accessible language and style. It focuses on the producer-consumer relationship and the challenge of providing consumers with exactly what they want, eliminating any wasted time and energy in the process. Using examples from a wide range of companies, Womack and Jones deconstruct the broken producer-consumer model and demonstrate how to repair it.

Lean Lexicon — provides definitions, examples, and lots of helpful illustrations to clarify the special language lean thinkers use — and sometimes confuse. Developed from a customer survey of the Lean Community about what concepts and terms were most confusing, the Lexicon includes abundant illustrations and examples. Unlike most other business glossaries in print or online, the Lexicon is focused exclusively on lean thinking and lean production.

Learning to See — the first of LEI’s prize-winning workbooks, it explains in plain language how to implement key elements of a lean business system. Written by subject matter experts, and generously illustrated, the workbooks contain step-by-step methodologies for implementation, complete with the necessary formulas and forms. Learning to See shows that the proper place to start the lean transformation is with the value stream for each product family within your facilities. Value-stream mapping identifies the root causes of waste and gives managers and executives a picture of the entire production process, including value and nonvalue-adding activities, so they can prioritize improvement actions.

Seeing the Whole  — expands the value-stream map beyond facility walls. It explains how to use the macro mapping tool to identify and remove waste along an extended value stream from raw materials to end customer. The workbook uses a realistic example, showing how four firms sharing a value stream can create a win-win-win-win future in which everyone, including the end consumer, is better off. 

Creating Continuous Flow  — provides step-by-step instructions for eliminating waste and creating continuous flow at the process level, especially at your critical “pacemaker” cells or lines. The workbook offers a practical methodology for gaining and sustaining the full benefits of cellularization.

Making Materials Flow  — explains in new detail how to supply purchased materials to cells and lines in order to support continuous flow. Key elements include the Plan for Every Part, developing a central supermarket, creating timed delivery routes, implementing pull signals, and sustaining and improving the system.

Creating Level Pull—using a realistic example company, the workbook shows readers how to make the transition to a robust pull system, including what items to use in finished-goods inventory, what items to make to stock, how to buffer the system against instability, how to achieve true end-to-end pull, how to schedule batch processes, and how to level the production schedule to meet the variations in demand with minimum inventories, capital costs, manpower, and production lead time.  This unique workbook helps you take a step toward “system kaizen,” a concept that is not yet well understood outside of Toyota.