amazon review: The Lean Manager by Michael Balle

			The Lean Manager by Michael Ballé Edition: Paperback
too long and risky way to success, why not try TOC ?, August 14, 2014 This review is from: The Lean Manager (Paperback) That is a good book from LEAN point of view. Very easy and realistic language, good explanation. BUT, I would like to contribute from Theory of Constraints point of view: Whole book emphazise on teamwork. What if you have failed ? Consider a very fragile business environment described in the book. There is almost no stock, heavily dependent on unreliable forecasts, no priority for improvement, everything is urgent, in case of a problem "team" would immediately solve it or else shipments would stop!! There are moments penalizing stocks and hailing stocks! There is an awareness of variability but only suggested way to preserve yourself is to keep stock but it has not been explained how to do it.... Moreover going down this road will take looong time to succeed.. TOC is more simple and direct. Find the constraint, have a buffer to preserve yourself just before the constraint. Nothing is rocket science, no software is required, no supermen is required. You will have better on time delivery, less stock, happy customers very soon. In case you find a constraint in the market, TOC will lead you to have different buffers for different products, easy, straightforward. You will still need lean methods to shorten changeovers, exploit the capacity of constraint,... I think "within the literature" books are blinding their followers. This is nothing special to this book. I could find some Lean parts in TOC literature but no TOC part at all in Lean literature.