What’s the point? This book focuses on Toyota’s manufacturing process and the Lean attributes. The book takes you through the philosophy and the bare bones implementation of the production models and practices that make the Toyota Way sustainable in other companies. The interesting point of the book was that there were many companies claiming to have adopted the Toyota Way, seeing short term improvements but many of the adopters would “betray” the principles of the Toyota Way and would see a regression within 8-12 months.
How was it? Originally I was hoping to find parallels that could be used during our software processes. The concepts presented in the book made sense for software at a nebulous level but the actual implementation proved to be very elusive. The book is a nice side note to be taken as a historical fact alongside software Lean processes but should not be used as a comparative basis in my opinion.
Who should read it? People who want an idea where Lean came from and see how it can be applied to other industries.
