Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, 2nd Ed by Daniel T. Jones; Abridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator James P. Womack

Expanded, updated, and more relevant than ever, the bestselling business classic by two internationally renowned management theorists shows how companies of any size in any industry can seize opportunities in the post-bubble economy.

Lean Thinking begins by helping listeners to identify value, asking, "What does the customer really want?" instead of "What can we try to convince the customer to accept?" Lean thinkers then identify the value stream—every step required to move a specific good or service from initial concept into the hands of the customer—for each product and ask if each step really creates value. Those that don't—the great majority—are then removed, and the remaining steps are conducted in continuous flow at the pull of the customer, as the firm manages toward perfection. As a consequence, lead times, costs of all sorts, and defects shrink, while responsiveness to customer needs and selling prices increase.

In an economic downturn, many companies are searching desperately for a sustainable formula for renewed growth and success. Lean Thinking is that formula—a proven blueprint and specific action plan that will help any company stabilize its position and grow steadily while better serving its customers, employees, suppliers, and investors.

Peter F. Drucker Author of The Post-Capitalist Society The Machine That Changed the World is a very important book. I am impressed.

Business Week The best current book on the changes reshaping manufacturing, and the most readable, too...conveys a very human sense of managers constrained by limited resources yet trying to do better.

Fortune A new and coherent thesis about automotive production...[the authors] back up their conclusions with unique statistical measures that are authoritative, extremely timely, and highly revealing. Think of this book as another step in the decade-long process of getting the attention of recalcitrant mass producers.

Financial Times A revealing and compellingly readable account of Japan's achievement in revolutionizing manufacturing....An eye-opener even for those who already knew Japan didn't do it all with robots.

Automotive News This is a book of great understanding, and of hope. It shows how to create an industrial world in which workers share the challenges and satisfactions of the business. It's a world in which assemblers communicate with suppliers and dealers in a way that improves life for all of them. Read it.

Philip Caldwell Chairman and CEO, Ford Motor Company, 1980-1985 Truly remarkable....The most comprehensive, instructive, mind-stretching and provocative analysis of any major industry I have ever known. Why pay others huge consulting fees? Just read this book.

Richard J. Schonberger Author of World Class Manufacturing: The Next Decade The manufacturing book of the nineties.

Daniel T. Jones is the chairman and founder of the Lean Enterprise Academy (www.leanuk.org), a nonprofit education and research organization based in the UK.