Kaikaku the Power and Magic of Lean : A Study in Knowledge Transfer

The Power and Magic of Lean is to discover those hidden treasures within your company: to find and eliminate all of the non-value adding wastes and to bring out the infinite creative capacity from every single worker.

In the early 1980’s, I met Mr. Ohno, Dr. Shingo, and other great manufacturing geniuses and published their books in English and brought to the west: Lean, JIT, Kanban, 5S, SMED, TPM, QFD, Hoshin, CEDAC, Kaizen Blitz and other powerful improvement tools and techniques.

Kaikaku is about the discovery of Lean, who I met, how I met them, and the colorful stories about the great manufacturing geniuses of our time.

Read this book in study groups to strengthen your Lean efforts.

Started Productivity Inc. and Productivity Press

Published hundreds of books on Japanese management practices including the classics on Lean manufacturing by Dr. Shigeo Shingo, Taiichi Ohno, Dr.Ryuji Fukuda, Dr. Yoji Akao, Jeffrey Liker, Seiichi Nakajima, James Swartz, Yosuhiro Monden, and others.

Norman is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and has written over 60 articles on Kaizen and Lean manufacturing.

He now consults with companies on harnessing the full creative power of their employees. One client went from 250 suggestions with 113 implemented in 2001 to 16,099 suggestions with 7,443 implemented in this last year.