The subtitle is "How multi-project management is transforming product development at Toyota and other companies," and that pretty much says what it is. Once you have lean approaches, how do you balance your whole set of product lines? Do you treat them as independent projects, or transfer technology between them? The authors suggest that this should be a considered decision, and also suggest that a concurrent transfer need not be as problematic as you might expect (though it can be carried too far). This is definitely not the first book you should read on the subject of "lean," but it does address a real concern, described in the context of the automobile industry.
 (Reviewed May, '03)

Toyota's lean manufacturing gets a lot of attention. But there's also a Toyota approach to product development that's less well known (though Mary Poppendieck does talk about it). This book uses a "business novel" plus discussion approach which I found unnecessary. But the story did bring out key ideas: knowledge-based development, set-based concurrent engineering, and more. (Reviewed May, '05)

Toyota's lean manufacturing system has had a lot of press, but lean influences their product development approach as well. This book emphasizes the system aspects of their approach. Along the way it explores a variety of practices and tools: set-based approaches, use of a chief engineer, alignment, and more. I preferred this book over Kennedy as it feels both broader and deeper. (Reviewed Nov., '06)

Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck. Addison-Wesley, 2003.

This book considers software development from the perspective of lean manufacturing, as popularized by Toyota. In lean approaches, there is a sense in which there is a constant striving to reduce all forms of waste, and by delaying decisions as long as possible (but no longer), we can reduce our need for inventory in all its forms.

The book is a toolbox for software managers - 22 tools in all, including such things as "The Last Responsible Moment," "Iterations," and "Leadership." Though they have synergy, you can read most of them fairly independently.

I recommend this book; in addition to a set of useful tools, it will give you a way to tie ideas from agile software development to the broader trends in lean development. (Reviewed August, '03)

I recommend this book wholeheartedly; it isn't the whole answer, but it's a great contribution to "what does it mean to manage an agile software team?" (Reviewed Dec., '02)

It's kind of hard to classify this book. It's from a lean manufacturing consultant, but it's geared to the whole organization. Suzaki argues that the "cell" metaphor used in manufacturing should be extended to the whole organization, and that you organize large companies as interlocking mini-companies. A key to the approach is what he calls "Glass Wall Management," which puts all the indicators, products, defects, etc. - everything a team does - in a war room setting. The goal of this is to transform the way people look at their work. This is an excellent and inspiring book.
 (Reviewed March, '03)

These are the authors of The Machine that Changed the World. (The "machine" was lean production.) In this book, they expand on the idea of "lean consumption." Their idea is that if consumers and businesses can better share information about current and future wants and needs, companies can build a supply chain that will have a lot less waste, and be simpler for everybody. This book is the background for their March, 2005 article in Harvard Business Review, expanding it with a number of examples in different industries. (Reviewed Sept., 2005)

This book is the story of lean production in the automobile industry, which the authors see as the successor of mass production, which was the successor of the craft industry. Taiichi Ohno of Toyota is one of the key figures associated with this transformation.

"The truly lean plant has two key organizational features: it transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers actually adding value to the line, and it has in place a system for detecting defects that quickly traces every problem, once discovered, to its ultimate cause." (p.99)

They go on to describe the "five whys" - keep asking why enough times to get to root causes.

Techniques of Lean Design

• Leadership: "Shusa" - large project leader. The (large, cross-functional) team lead has people reporting to them, i.e., they're in charge, not "coordinators."
• Teamwork: tightly knit teams
• Communication: Confront conflicts directly. The team pledges to follow the group's decisions. "All the relevant specialties are present, and the shusa's job is to force the group to confront all the difficult tradeoffs they'll have to make to agree on the project."
• Simultaneous Development: anticipation and approximation. Usually turns out OK, but if the anticipation is wrong they put the correction on a fast track.

"But what is it about this system [intimate relationship with suppliers] that allows an interchange of such sensitive information to take place? The answer is simple. The system works because a rational framework exists for determining costs, price, and profits. This framework makes the two parties want to work together for mutual benefit, rather than look upon one another with suspicion." (p.148)

Lean supply uses a cost tracking approach: establish a target price, then work backwards to figure out how to make it with reasonable profit for suppliers. "In other words, it is a 'market price minus'
system rather than a 'supplier plus cost' system." Two additional techniques are value engineering (done by working backward to identify the cost of each stage of production) and value analysis (cost reduction by cutting cost-critical steps).

"When setup times have been honed [...] and where production runs are frequent, short, and uninterrupted, cost estimators do not have to wait around for days or weeks to average the performance over several
production runs." (p.149)

Lean production: "This mode of production achieves its highest efficiency, quality, and flexibility when all activities from design to assembly occur in the same place. As a senior Honda executive recently remarked, 'We wish we could design, engineer, fabricate, and assemble the entire car in one large room, so that everyone involved could be in face-to-face contact with everyone else.'"
                
Automobile production is clearly not XP, but the parallels are interesting. (Reviewed Nov., '02)