Handbook of Lean Solutions (EN)

Lean starts with one question: what constitutes value for the customer? Yet most Lean initiatives focus almost exclusively on the production side—more efficient processes, less waste, shorter lead times. What the customer actually experiences is strikingly often overlooked.

In *The Lean Solutions Handbook*, Womack and Jones turn the perspective on its head. They don’t start with the manufacturer, but with the consumer, and what they see is surprising and thought-provoking.

What will you learn in the Lean Solutions Handbook?

In this book, Womack and Jones shift the focus from production to consumption. The central question is no longer how to produce more efficiently, but how customers can most easily obtain the solution they need. This shift leads to a series of sharp observations and practical insights.

The authors demonstrate how consumption in the modern economy has become increasingly complex: as a customer, you have dozens of providers offering ever-smaller solutions, each with its own account, subscription, customer service, and update cycle. You have to search for, purchase, install, maintain, and eventually dispose of each of these services. As a result, consumers are increasingly being used as free labor—not consciously, but as an inevitable byproduct of how services are designed.

Using extensive real-world examples from a wide range of industries—from aviation and retail to healthcare and services—Womack and Jones demonstrate how companies that break this pattern not only deliver greater customer value but also become more efficient in the process. There is no trade-off between customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, provided you view things through the right Lean lens.

In the book, the authors also introduce a number of practical tools, including the consumption map for mapping the customer experience, the box score for assessing the overall value stream, and the milk run principle for smarter delivery.

Why should I read the Lean Solutions Handbook?

Lean Thinking and The Machine That Changed the World put Lean on the map as a production method. The Lean Solutions Handbook is the logical follow-up that shows what’s still missing when you look only at production: the experience of the person for whom you’re doing it all.

This book is particularly relevant for organizations seeking to deepen their Lean approach beyond process optimization, and for anyone working in the service industry—a sector where most Lean literature still offers too little guidance. Womack and Jones’ insights are incisive, well-reasoned, and surprisingly relevant, even in today’s world, where digital services have further increased the complexity of consumption.

Who is the *Lean Solutions Handbook* intended for?

• Lean practitioners and coaches who want to look beyond production efficiency
• Managers and professionals in the service industry, retail, healthcare, and other customer-focused sectors
• Service designers and customer experience specialists who want to apply Lean thinking to the customer experience
• Anyone who has read *Lean Thinking* and wants to take the next step

What do fellow writers think of this book?

"With *Lean Solutions*, Womack and Jones bring their thinking on value to a close. Lean starts with the customer, and this book finally explains what that really means in practice." — Michael Ballé, author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager

"A refreshing and essential addition to *Lean Thinking*. Anyone who thinks Lean is only for factories should read this book." — Jeffrey K. Liker, author of The Toyota Way

Additional Information

About the authors

Jim Womack is co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute and one of the world’s most influential Lean thinkers. Together with Daniel Jones, he wrote *The Machine That Changed the World* (1990), the book that introduced the term “lean production,” and *Lean Thinking* (1996), which put Lean on the global map as a management philosophy. Womack has guided organizations through Lean transformations for decades and is considered one of the architects of the global Lean movement.

Daniel Jones is a co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute and the Cardiff Business School Lean Enterprise Research Centre. As co-author of these two groundbreaking works, he has made a decisive contribution to the spread of Lean thinking beyond the automotive industry. Jones has been particularly active in applying Lean in the British healthcare, retail, and service sectors, thereby bridging the gap between Lean as a production method and Lean as a broad organizational philosophy.