The Lean Turnaround: How Business Leaders Use Lean Principles to Create Value and Transform Their Company

INTRODUCTION

Any Business Can Be Turned Around

For most people, the idea of “turning around” a business conjures up certain types of activities: major head-count reductions, selling or closing the weakest parts of the company, selling off excess assets, reducing debt, increasing short-term earnings, and then selling the company. The idea of improving the way in which the company adds value in order to effect a turnaround never comes up. Why? I guess it is because most people associate the word turnaround with the type of financial engineering activities just mentioned. In addition, almost all companies, both good and bad, tend to take their value-adding activities for granted. The “this is the way we have always done it” mentality is alive and ...