Product Description

Reducing costs, rushing to market and accelerating lead times are vital for survival in today’s competitive environment. Inventory is no longer considered an asset, and strategies need to be in place to operate with minimal amounts of it. Lean Six Sigma Logistics illustrates how to integrate Lean, Six Sigma and Logistics into a cohesive process that will help eliminate unnecessary inventories through disciplined efforts to understand and reduce variation, while increasing speed and flow in the supply chain.

This “how to” book provides the vehicle to solidify strategic position, win over customers, and achieve increased profit margins. It is the one book that executives, practitioners, consultants and academics will all want on their bookshelf. A must read for the CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, VP, Director, or Logistics Manager.

Key Features:
-Provides a method to develop strategies as well as tactical steps for successful operational implementation of Lean Six Sigma Logistics
-Addresses top management concerns while providing necessary tools and guidance for the logistics practitioner
-Features the Logistics Bridge Model to serve as your compass and map for leveraging value, eliminating waste, and enhancing your abilities to view the supply chain with a critical eye and to develop a vision for continuous improvement
-Presents definitive answers for improving operations, making customers happy, and reducing logistics costs and variability

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286238 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-11
• Released on: 2005-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

About the Author
Dr. Thomas Goldsby is a leading researcher, author, and speaker on the subjects of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. He is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Kentucky.
Robert Martichenko is President of LeanCor LLC, headquartered in Florence, Kentucky. LeanCor is a full-service logistics and supply chain company focused on working with organizations embracing Lean and Six Sigma in the supply chain.

Customer Reviews

They say it can't be done...
I would suggest this book to anyone interested in Lean, Six-Sigma, or Logistics. Dr. Goldsby and Mr. Martichenko take three subject matters and blend them into a well orchestrated logistics model that would make any logistics professional re-think the way s/he is executing their logistics plan. Anyone from a truck driver or dock worker to the CEO of a fortune 500 company could benefit from having his or her eyes opened to the amount of waste and imperfections that happen within the Logistics industry. It's surprising to think that so many companies are too busy trying to implement Lean and Six-Sigma into their production/outbound that they are losing money hand over foot with their logistics. Great Buy! Great Investment! Highly recommended!

One more good book on lean logistics
This book gives a good overall picture of lean logistics from different angles, not going into much detail. Must read for all exec level, who should understand the impact and benefits of adapting lean logistics combined with six sigma.

As authors mentioned, today many managements go after transportation expenses without understanding "total logistics cost". Who ever understand the concept of "total logistics cost", they will be able to derive advantages of lean logistics.

Highly recommended for professional logisticians
I am an assistant professor of logistics and resource operations at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

I am impressed with the quality and utility of this book and recommend it to logisticians looking for ways to plan for and apply LSS in their organizations. Of the 20 or so LSS titles in my library, this is my favorite practitioner's guide--especially for its focus on logisticians' challenges.

Details:
The Department of Defense's (DOD's) use of the latest management practices from industry to improve business operations has had mixed results over the years. Some of those techniques include benchmarking, business process reengineering, meeting Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award criteria, using Balanced Scorecards, Total Quality Management, life-cycle management, Business Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Resource Planning, Statistical Process Control, ISO [International Organization for Standardization] 9000, other assorted programs dating back to the 1960s, and the introduction of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System. Not all have delivered on their promises of cost-effective warfighter support. Operating tempo, rising costs, and the status of the national economy drive the urgent search for solutions.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is another candidate for solving the joint challenges of improving speed and quality throughout the production process. It fuses two management strategies, Lean and Six Sigma, that provide a vision for truly transformational improvements. Lean traces its heritage to the Toyota production system and features a relentless pursuit of eliminating waste and tying customer requirements directly to the design and production systems to improve system throughputs. Six Sigma comes from statistics-based, data-driven principles aimed at reducing variation and improving quality through process control. The fusion of these two strategies has been used throughout DOD with remarkable results.

[...]The authors of Lean Six Sigma Logistics: Strategic Development to Operational Success are well-qualified to write an LSS practitioner's guide. Dr. Thomas Goldsby is an associate professor of supply chain management at the University of Kentucky. He has written extensive publications in highly regarded, peer-reviewed professional and academic journals and sits on the editorial review board of the International Journal of Logistics Management. Robert Martichenko is an experienced practicing logistician and an active Lean instructor, and sits on the editorial advisory board of Logistics Quarterly magazine.

The book's central argument is that LSS provides all the tools needed to reduce waste, find and create value, manage the supply chain, and delight customers. Aimed at practicing logisticians, its well- grounded theoretical insights are complemented by the wisdom of experience. The authors consider planning, preparation, and execution concepts from the strategic to the tactical level and make the case for logistics as a core competency integral to all operations.

The book's added value is the mapping of LSS concepts to the practice of logistics. Using the metaphor of the "Logistics Bridge," it maps out the integration of LSS into life-cycle operations to address total logistics costs and waste reduction.

After a quick overview of LSS, the book dives deeply into a taxonomy of waste in its various forms. The Logistics Bridge model unfolds in terms of the flows of assets, information, and money; the capabilities of predictability, stability, and visibility; and the disciplines of collaboration, systems optimization, and waste elimination. The authors describe the application of the full suite of LSS tools to the logistics model. The discussions of the limits of LSS and science are framed by a modern understanding of complexity and systems dynamics. The book concludes with a 20-page case study that is fully documented with the kinds of messy narratives and data collections that managers would reasonably address while transforming their business operations. The book also is extensively supplemented through the Internet with free, downloadable materials from [...]. Lean Six Sigma Logistics: Strategic Development to Operational Success is written in clear, powerful prose with a tone of quiet, professional authority.

In addition to using the book to provide extensive support to industry, the authors have used it as a guiding text for training workshops conducted with several Air Mobility Command (AMC) units including squadrons at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland; Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; McChord Air Force Base, Washington; Elmendorf Air Force Base, Arkansas; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; Yokota Air Base, Japan; and Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Airmen and officers from several other squadrons participated in these workshops between 2006 and 2008. The core principles and tools of the book have found success in the noncommercial, highly structured environment associated with military support of the warfighter.