Custom essays on The letter of James P. Womack

The objective of this essay is to analyze the letter of James P. Womack, the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute. The letter concludes his thought about the crisis of 2001 and some recommendations for business on how to avoid the negative consequences of financial crisis.

Mega-mura and heijunka
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      It is generally known that the economical development is cyclical. The growth of demand causes the boost of production, than the market becomes saturated and after the crisis of overproduction the new cycle begins. This principle remains the same for ages; however, the specific features of every cycle can vary.

      The specific of economic development our days is the deep knowledge of economic theory and the opportunity to prevent, completely or partly, the negative impact of the next crisis, or “mura”, as it was named by Womack. Generally the lean production is the anti-crisis concept, which allows the raw material stores shortening, the production optimization and so on. Besides, Womack introduces the “heijunka” as the tool for stabilization. Womack reasonably mentions that all the effective measures are often proposed after the crisis not before it. However, the creative approach to crisis can be very useful to remove muda, (mini) mura, and muri. Among the possible actions Womack names the recruitment policies rethinking, company-wide bonuses creation and converting physical inventories into cash. The author realizes that these measures care the most affective before the crisis, and he also proposes some steps that can be taken to get through the current crisis (2001 year). Among these steps are re-centralization of work within the company and taking some works from suppliers, and the increase of production effectiveness due to process optimization and unnecessary expense leaving.

      Te letter of James P. Womack describes the economic situation on the 2001. This description corresponds to the modern economic theories. The measures proposed by Womack can form the creative approach to the crisis and prevent the most negative of it.