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Lean Manufacturing is being implemented in thousands of corporations today. Although the discipline has been in existence for over two decades, only the largest corporations have any long term use of the tools.

In fact, many corporations have only begun to implement lean manufacturing. These companies are hoping to achieve the same success written about on the internet and reported in the publications their industry publications.

These same executives have no doubt heard the horror stories of failed implementations of lean manufacturing. Their fear is wasting money and time on another “program of the year”.

The key to success is the correct training for the right people. The good news is the amount of training programs available from which to choose. The potentially critical mistake is choosing the wrong course which may lead the corporation down a long and expensive path of wasted money and time.

Lean manufacturing is not just a collection of “tools” like the normal tool box in your garage. At the home, some jobs require a hammer while others take a wrench. Most lean tools work together, so they must be mastered to determine how the interaction works to solve the business challenges.

For example, a kaizen event utilized to solve a SMED (single minute exchange of die) issue might require the use of the value stream map to determine bottleneck priorities. Alternatively, an OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) kaizen event often requires knowledge of takt time and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) to obtain maximum improvement.

In addition to all of the technical necessities, there is the soft side of gaining “buy in” and empowering experienced workers to change their thinking and habits. This is not easy, especially when these workers have done a good job the same way for many years.

Companies that try and fit tools to their problems are doomed to fail. Employee will develop morale problems and begin to distrust management. The distraction often takes years to overcome, and the worst part is the bad name lean manufacturing gets in the process.

Companies that train a critical mass of individuals, hire several lean manufacturing experts, and commit the resources to change the culture in a positive manner are the ones written about. They know lean manufacturing works. They may go down a short “wrong” path occasionally, but find their way to the destination, which is a corporation operating in a state of lean with ongoing continuous improvement.

There are many good training courses. However, lean is best applied using the PDCA model. The model, by definition (Plan-Do-Check-Act), requires flexibility. This is best taught by an instructor that has years of experience with lean manufacturing implementations. It is best taught by someone that has seen failure as well as success.

Once the individuals have been trained in the basic lean manufacturing principles, it is important to have a collection of materials for continuous reference and training. There are many good books written about lean. Look beyond the top sellers, as many lean experts have written good books that are not marketed well.

It is also important to “see” a successful lean implementation. Visit other facilities to see their success and ask your own questions that may be relevant. Most companies welcome the chance to show off their success, especially to a local company in another industry.

Some companies hire a consultant to help lean their lean journey. You can easily find as many success as failure stories. Hiring a consultant for implementation requires the same investigation as finding a trainer. Again, asking other local companies is a great way of finding good consultants.

When visiting a company, be sure to ask questions of those individuals that weren’t responsible for the lean implementation. You’ll get unbiased opinions from various perceptions. The person responsible for the implementation would find it difficult to admit financial mistakes in training, implementation, and hiring.

The lean journey never ends. However, taking the straightest path to the lean state will minimize expense and avoid distraction. The state of lean often brings huge corporate success in the way of additional business, products, profit, and job security.

It would be hard to measure the public’s surprise at the recent call for supervisory leadership training in Federal agencies. Fair or not, the persona of federal management practices does not encourage the idea of “soft skills” used to develop employees and the success of their tasks. At a current event sponsored by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service attention was highlighted on federal agencies’ front-line supervisors. Citing the ‘relatively neglected strata in the management hierarchy’ James Thompson, associate professor of public administration at the University of Illinois-Chicago asserted that front-line supervisors have a bigger influence on employees’ day-to-day performance than management at other levels, and they provide the most relevant leadership, hence the need to train and develop supervisors as leaders.

“Though not a new concept in business, this may herald a paradigm shift for government
agencies and leadership at the supervisory level for using a mission statement and vision statement in achieving greater inter-compartmental communication. This typically results in increased job satisfaction and ultimately, a higher realization of successful performance” said Don Midgett, veteran business and government leadership consultant, and author of ‘Mission and Vision Statements: Your Path to a Successful Business Future.’ Midgett recommends a tiered approach for using the mission and vision statement process with supervisors. “Personnel at any level can begin with the organization’s top level mission and vision statement, analyze their role (mission) then communicate how what they do will support (vision) the organization’s top level statements. An organization that can employ a tiered concept of leadership will notice improved performance levels. They will have a pyramid of mission statements and vision statements to better define their purpose and desired future.”

As a consultant to government organizations, Midgett has seen positive changes in leadership and organizations that used mission and vision statements, tiered the concept throughout their organizations, down to the supervisor level, and successfully employed their vision driven strategic planning process.

Implementing vision driven leadership and the strategic planning process instituted at the supervisory level speeds up vision driven change. It allows everybody to get on board faster with a better understanding of their need, performance expectations and contribution. A tiered approach to your mission and vision will promote collaborative communication, feedback and coaching.

Is time preventing you from improving your business acumen? Your business is taking up all your time and there is very little left to read or go to courses? Audio books can solve this problem for you.

With an audio book you can enjoy the same value of any business book when preparing to go to work in the morning, when commuting to and from work, or when doing your daily workout. You can now use this time in a productive way by listening to some of the best business audio books.

Below are five different titles to choose from.

The Lazy Investor - by Steve Majors

#1Business Tool / The insider’s guide to sales, marketing and negation .
Discover situations, ideas and questions designed to immediately spark your imagination and enhance your success through powerful business skill.

A powerful audio download that answers the question “Can you sell your way to wealth?”

It includes:

- What selling is, and what it isn’t
- The profession of sales
- 7 steps of sales
- Growing your business through marketing and negotiations
- Mistakes and the closes that work
- The definition of selling
- Direct marketing with results
- Proven direct mail techniques
- Making the most of email
- Harness the Power of the Internet
- Person-to-person negotiation
- Selling skills that will make you King

What Clients Love - by Harry Beckwith

Harry Beckwith is the author of Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, both marketing classics. Now he applies his unparalleled clarity, insight, humor, and expertise to a new age of mass communication and mass confusion. What Clients Love will help you stand out from the crowd - and sell anything to anyone.

From making a pitch to building a brand, from designing a logo to closing a sale, this is a field guide to take with you to the front lines of today

A Perfect Mess - by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

EVER SINCE EINSTEIN’S STUDY OF BROWNIAN MOTION, scientists have understood that a little disorder can actually make systems more effective. But most people still shun disorder-or suffer guilt over the mess they can’t avoid. No longer!

With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess, A Perfect Mess overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the meteoric career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, coauthors Abrahamson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones.

Applying this idea on scales both large (government, society) and small (desktops, garages), A Perfect Mess uncovers all the ways messiness can trump neatness for any system. Whether it’s your company’s management plan or your hallway closet that bedevils you, this audio book will show why to say yes to mess.

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt - by Donny Deutsch and Peter Knobler

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt is an inspirational book from one of America’s most colorful and exciting entrepreneurs. Donny Deutsch lays out the core principles that propelled him to create tremendous wealth, build a huge and influential business, and become a national personality. Using inside stories of the media, the advertising industry, and a youth spent growing up on the streets of New York, Donny gives the commonsense bottom line that he has learned along the way, broken down into real, relevant and inspiring lessons that will be useful to everyone from the front-line sales person to the middle manager to the successful corporate executive.

The Flip Side - by Flip Flippen
Flip Flippen is the most influential man you’ve never heard of. His philosophy has touched the lives of some of the most powerful individuals in the country - from Wall Street leaders to top sportsmen including Terry Bradshaw. Flippen’s approach is simple.

When we learn how to identify our ‘personal constraints’ and take the steps to correct self-limiting behaviors, we will experience a surge in productivity, achieve things we have only dreamed of, and find greater happiness.

Flippen has created a simple process to help listeners find their greatest and build a plan to ‘flip’ that weakness into a newfound strength.

These 5 audio books can do a lot for your business and career if you take the time to listen to them, and apply what you will learn therein to your business and career.

If you dream of skipping the seemingly endless commute to work every day, and you also wish you did not have to put up with your boss who would be lost without you, then you might have what it takes to become self employed. After school and at meal time, while using big chunks of time for your work when all have flown the nest during the day to go to school.

If all this sounds appealing, then you simply owe it to yourself to look into the possibility of self employment. While there are different ways to go about achieving your goal, the road to self employment may be less traveled but it is nonetheless enticing. Yet before you bid your boss farewell, make sure you have what it takes to turn a dream into a profitable reality.

First and foremost, you must remember that you will no longer be able to look to a second party to hand you a guaranteed check every other week. Will your business permit you to continue supplying you with funds so that you will be able to live in the style to which you are accustomed? If you are heavily bogged down with credit cards bills, mortgage and car payments, and if your children attend private school, you will need to make sure you have enough money in savings to support yourself for at least year, so that you can give yourself ample time to pursue your dream while keeping up with your obligations.

Secondly, remember that you are setting yourself up as a business. As such, you are not only the provider of the service or products, but you yourself are the figurehead, spokesperson, and image of the very business upon which you are embarking. Thus, if an issue of liability arises, the customer or client will look to you for help and if needed compensation.

This gets especially tricky if you decide to become a self-employed representative for a supplement company. While these supplements may be perfectly safe in and of themselves, in conjunction with other products they may actually be somewhat harmful, and you will need to ascertain where your liability beings and ends in case something goes wrong.

Legal threats of that nature may be overcome by incorporating your business, yet in the case of medical claims you may not be able to financially survive an adverse judgment in the favor of a client or customer. For anyone desiring self-employment it is a good idea to invest a bit of money in one or two hours of a small business lawyers time to find out exactly where you stand. This step may save you a lot of money and grief in the long run.

Thousands of people are deciding that they want to work from home, and they are making it work for them. Maybe it can work for you as well. The first step is to figure out what you are doing with your life now and see if there is any way that you can do that at home.

If you do something in an office, can you move most of your work to a home office? Are you providing something through a company that you can provide on your own from your home? If you can figure out a way to do what you are doing from your home you might be set. Many bosses today are helping their employees find ways that they can do much of their work from their home offices. With advances in technology, this is something that is always getting easier.

If what you are currently doing cannot be done from home, do not despair. There are still some options for you when it comes to working from home. If you are willing to take the chance of quitting your job, and you are good at what you do, chances are good that there is going to be an online company that will need your services.

If you want to completely change what you are doing for a living, you are also going to be able to find online work, whether or not it is in the field that you currently work in. If you want to work at home, a good way to start is to get your portfolio and your resume somewhere it can be accessed online.

This might mean setting up a website for yourself, somewhere that you can send potential employers to look at what you can do. After you have this, you should sit down and make a list of the types of work that you would be willing to do. Then, you can begin your job hunt! You should be able to find several jobs that can match your desires and your needs and wants, as you go through life.

Remember that in the end working form home should not make you more stressed and more hateful of your job. If you can not find something that you can do at home to make money that will make you happy, maybe working from home is not what you should be doing. Always keep your mind open for new possibilities.

Do you have the right personality to be self employed? If you are determined, driven to achieve your goal, and able to keep your vision in the crosshairs at all times, then you will most likely be on your way. If less than complimentary clients and even those who harshly criticize your ideas do not deter you from trying, but perhaps are actually spurring you on to try even harder, then you are most certainly on your way to success.

Yet what about the financial ability to see it through are you ready? Can you weather an equipment failure, loss of data, and the need for upgraded equipment without having to resort to using your personal credit cards? Are you able to survive if one or more client do not pay you one time but leave you hanging for a few months? If you answered yes to the first two questions you may be well on your way to self employment, yet you are not quite there! There are still some problems associated with being self employed that you need to be aware of before bidding farewell to your boss.

Perhaps one of the biggest fear factors is the IRS. These initials are sufficient to drive the fear of doing business into even the most hardened entrepreneurs, and you may be no exception. After all, you will need to be meticulously organized and instead of only paying taxes once a year, you will find yourself at the taxman office every quarter.

Furthermore, you will need to be prepared to pay your Medicare and FICA and up that point in time of being self employed, it was your boss responsibility to do so. Before dismissing that guaranteed paycheck, make sure you will be able to traverse the narrow path the IRS has set forth for the self employed.On a personal note, self employment for those with family is fraught with another set of problems. A steady paycheck keeps a family well supported and many money worries at bay, while self employment may be more akin to times of feast or famine.

Are your family members willing to help you achieve your dream of being self employed? Do they understand the implications of no longer being able to count on the bi-weekly direct deposit in the bank account? It is imperative that everyone involved knows what the changes will mean and get on board with you. Failure to paint an honest picture will result in misunderstandings, feelings of betrayal, and such an increase in strife that you will find yourself scouring the help wanted ads simply to keep peace in the family. Sorting this out ahead of time ensures that everyone is on the same page and ready and willing to support your dream and perhaps even make it their own!

The dream of being successfully self-employed is quite possibly innate to anyone who is employed. The idea of having the artistic freedom necessary to create winning marketing campaigns is probably one of the most often cited reasons why an employee would much rather prefer to be their own boss. Another reason is the fact that the relationship between employer and employee has broken down at some level and the employee realizes that certain needs have not been met and most certainly will remain unmet while in the employ of the company.

Yet self employment itself is a bit of a double edged sword and not everyone is cut out for this mode of earning a living. If you are contemplating this step so as to work from home and throw off the shackles that corporate employment has become to you, think long and hard if you are truly ready.There are a set of problems associated with being self employed, and perhaps the biggest obstacle a novice faces is his or her own self.

Having a dream is easy; yet making this dream a reality demands a certain level of self discipline. Some personality types are not able to transit from reporting to a boss to reporting to no one yet remaining just as driven. Additionally, some personality types that benefited from the buffer the employer presented when it came to relationships with clients or customers, will sorely find their patience tested when a new client harshly criticizes the marketing strategy you present to them.

Especially if you are in an artistic field, some of these criticisms could feel like personal attacks or even personal rejection, making this form of employment almost harder than working for someone else. The second problem you will face is the question as to who will bankroll your endeavor. After all, it is not enough to have a great idea.

You probably also have bills, a family to feed, and if nothing else the daily needs that have to be fulfilled. The number one challenge associated with this step is the fact that many a newbie will use credit cards to get set up. Yet the problems do not end there.

How much liquidity you have at the onset will also determine your overall success since it dictates whether or not you can live with the fact that one client is taking an extraordinary long period of time to finally pay you. If one or maybe even more slow clients spell financial trouble to such an extent that you have to touch your retirement savings or home equity, you might not yet be ready for self employment. It is important to begin being your own boss from a position of strength, not weakness.