TWO LEAN IT BOOKS:  Lean IT by Bell & Orzen and Lean Management Principles for IT by Plenert

Lean IT, Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation, by Steven C. Bell and Michael A. Orzen, CRC Press, 2011  

Mike Orzen and I have agreed to disagree on this book. 

                                            Lean is an assumption, IT is a necessity.

What Lean IT talks about may be something that we might need – better process in IT, much like the better processes that companies have achieved by applying kaizen and Toyota or Honda production methods to operations – but it does not address the elephant in the room, the integrated enterprise enabled by solid information technology, on a foundation of lean.   

This is not something that could not be fixed with an updated 2d edition.  My venerated Free Press editor Bob Wallace, a veteran old school editor who advised and worked side by side with his authors, from development down through galleys, said, “A book is forever.”  What he meant was that you get only one chance to get it right.  Well, publishing has fortunately changed, and authors Bell and Orzen are well positioned, and indeed we are impatiently waiting, for a new edition of Lean IT to tell us what systems and what integration protocols can give us the end-to-end completeness that manufacturing businesses so desperately need. 

Another of Bob Wallace, and my own, proscriptions to authors is to never begin a major book -  and make no mistake, the problem of what to do with IT now that so many companies have unplugged their computers or stitched together many disparate, mismatched and overly expensive software tools, makes this volume a major book – with history.  We don’t need to revisit the development or history of Lean Manufacturing, or Kaizen, or PDCA, or now A3, not when a simple timeline with 1 or 2 pages of explanatory captions would do.  What we need is the meat, the giant value stream map that answers these and dozens of other unasked IT questions, like:

·         Who owns and maintains major systems elements such as the Bill of Materials

·         How does IT handle push AND pull systems

·         How much should a company expect to pay for a fully integrated IT system, end-to-end

·         What are the security options and their appropriate disaster recovery protocols

·         What is Demand Sensing and why do you need it?

·         What should a good Risk Management IT system offer?

·         What Costing systems should do, and how does Should Cost, Target Cost fit in

·         System Evaluation – procedure for evaluating current systems vs. a new start, a checklist for decision making

·         How to measure an IT system ROI

·         Leadership questions – who selects, who leads, who implements, who designs?

·         Cloud vs. Local?

·         Big Data and Data mining – which size companies need it and why; costs

·         IT in Outsourcing – What are the minimum “must-haves” Global Strategic Sourcing

·         Quality Management IT – manual, automated, integrated?

·         Lean Logistics and Distribution – what systems must be in place for efficient global supply management

·         Packaging – Lean Packaging principles and simple software

My mother, the original Mill Girl, believed in second, and third, and even fourth chances.  She knew that we all start at the same place and the lucky ones get to try harder, do it again, get it right.  She never soft-soaped her message, “Patricia, you can do better,” but she always was willing to help.  When I couldn’t learn how to read - the letters were a jumble - she sat me down and drilled me on Dick and Jane, after school - from September to March, until the letters made sense.  When I got D- on all my Latin quizzes, she signed the take-home sheets, sat me down and told me as she ran out to work at 6:30 am, “You’re wasting your teacher’s time.  Get it right. You can do better.” 

Nobody said this IT stuff would be easy.  Nobody guaranteed that all the pieces from fiercely competitive software sellers would all fit, or would even work.  But if somebody doesn’t sit down and get it right – specify our real needs for strategic sourcing, manufacturing, engineering and new products, logistics, distribution and customer management – and then start putting the pieces back together, we won’t, even in 3, or 5 or 10 years, get it right.  It’s time folks, time to put the pieces back together. 

I think this whole IT puzzle is a challenge we must work out over the next 3 – 5 years if we are to see more than a casual return of manufacturing to the Americas.  I’m a Mill Girl too, and that’s why I feel so strongly that we need a few outspoken visionaries to map out the journey for us, and at least get us on the road -  even if we have to hitch-hike there, it’s a start!   I have no doubt that Orzen and Bell might be among that special cadre of Seers who can look ahead and plot the track – they’ve got the ability - but they’ve got to spell it out, stick the pins in the map, and take us there. 

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