New Book, "A Factory of One," Explains How to Increase Personal & Professional Productivity

Jan. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance is an Innovative book showing professionals and office workers how Lean principles adapted from top manufacturers can lighten the heavy office workloads and longer hours caused by layoffs and new technologies.

This book describes how individuals can foster a new mindset and improve their performance by applying Lean methods to their work. It relates powerful Lean tools such as visual management, flow, pull, 5S, and kaizen to daily work, revealing how they can help to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and link the individual worker ever more closely to customer value. This practice will assist employees in developing greater self-awareness, more disciplined problem-solving skills, and the ability to self-correct errors.

“No matter what kind of work you do, you’re involved in transforming some type of input into a different form of output that a customer wants,” said author Dan Markovitz, a personal performance expert who has pioneered adapting principles from lean manufacturing to office and knowledge work. “That act of transformation makes you, in essence, a factory—and that means that you can benefit from lean tools and concepts.”

This book not only provides the tools, but also teaches how to find the root causes underlying inefficiencies in your workforce so they can be eliminated permanently. It will enable immediate improvement in personal productivity while developing the skills needed for continuous improvement. It includes real-world examples that illustrate how these principles have been successfully applied across a range of industries. Providing the perfect mix of what-to-do with why-to-do it, the text details a step-by-step approach to applying Lean principles to any type of work.

“Dan Markovitz brings a thoughtful and supremely practical perspective to the fundamental scarcity faced by us all: time. His approach blends conceptual frameworks and concrete specifics—a powerful and useful combination—to reduce the noise and clutter in our lives and work. Markovitz can help us all to be more effective!”

- Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last and Great by Choice

About The Author:
Daniel Markovitz is president of TimeBack Management, a consulting firm that radically improves individuals and team performances by identifying and eliminating root cause impediments to productivity.

Daniel Markovitz discusses the themes and background for this book in these two videos:
Part 1: www.youtu.be/jWqCNkl22-w
Part 2: www.youtu.be/gop2JE29afw

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TimeBack Management is a consulting firm that helps companies radically improve individual and team performance.