Better Thinking, Better Results: Case Study and Analysis of an Enterprise-Wide Lean Transformation

Better Thinking, Better Results is a detailed case study and analysis of The Wiremold Company's rare "widespread fast" Lean transformation between 1991 and 2001, written to answer the question senior managers keep asking: "How do you actually do it?" Rather than another book of Lean theory or tools, it shows Lean management was applied as a complete, enterprise-wide management system, and gives leaders a concrete, honest roadmap drawn from a company that got it right.

This book helps readers by:

• Showing Why Real Change Must Start at the Top. It uses Wiremold's pre-transformation situation to demonstrate how deteriorating results and rising competition demand a genuine change in leadership, not incremental tinkering.
• Turning Lean Into a Operations and Growth Strategy. It reveals how Lean principles and practices become the engine of a time-based competitive strategy tied to corporate purpose, rather than a factory-floor initiative.
• Making Kaizen the First Priority. It walks through how to launch and run early kaizen activities and, crucially, how to shift the organization from a results focus to a process focus and how that new focus achieves results.
• Providing a Blueprint for Transforming the Company. It details set-up reduction, one-piece flow, kanban, production leveling, and visual controls with great specificity to guide real implementation across the enterprise.
• Treating Lean as a People System. It confronts how managers view people, addresses employees' fears (including job security and union support), and shows how to win genuine, widespread buy-in.
• Growing the Business Through New Products. It explains how to redeploy the capacity Lean frees, improving the new product development process, filling gaps in the product line via acquisitions using free-up capital.
• Extending Lean to Acquisitions. It shows how Lean makes acquisitions faster to integrate and more profitable, using Wiremold's domestic and foreign acquisitions as proof.
• Delivering Lean's Benefits to Customers. It offers rare guidance on extending improvement backward to suppliers and forward to distributors and end-use customers.
• Fixing How Performance Is Measured. It exposes why traditional cost accounting drives bad decisions in Lean management and how to measure and report performance in ways that are consistent with Lean.
• Proving The Results Are Real. It documents Wiremold's impressive financial and non-financial gains, giving skeptical executives hard evidence that the approach pays off.
• Distinguishing Real Lean from Fake Lean. It draws the sharp line between a true management system built on both "continuous improvement" and "respect for people" and a tools-only imitation that embodies just one — and introduces a new model for leadership and change.

More than a success story, this is a practical guide aimed squarely at CEOs and senior managers who want enterprise-wide results rather than isolated operational wins. For leaders who suspect their Lean efforts have stalled at the level of tools, it offers both the "how" and the honest discipline that separate lasting transformation from imitation.

Dr. Bob Emiliani has been a progressive management practitioner and researcher for over 30 years. He worked in industry for 15 years and had management responsibility in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain management at Pratt & Whitney. Bob was part of a team responsible for implementing TPS principles and practices in both manufacturing and supply chains at Pratt & Whitney. Subsequently, he was full-time professor for 23 years. He now holds the honorary title of Professor Emeritus. Bob was the first academic to establish a research agenda focused on Lean leadership, resulting in numerous publications and varied leadership development workshops. Bob is a prolific, versatile, and award-winning writer whose publications span engineering, business, social sciences, and humanities. He has authored or co-authored 28 books and 45 peer-reviewed papers across six different disciplines (leadership, management, management history, supply chain management, higher education, and materials engineering). His work is widely recognized and he is praised for being a unique voice and a creative thinker.