William Waddell excellent posts on the Evolving Excellence blog are always an interesting read. He, and Norman Bodek, have published a new book, Rebirth of American Industry. Read the full Excerpt from the book. The Evolving Excellence blog also has a post: A New Must-Read Book - From Our Own Bill Waddell.

Norman Bodek has also written: Kaikaku, The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen (with Bunji Tozawa) and The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen (Workbook) (with Bunji Tozawa). He also recently started his own blog: Kaikaku.

Articles by Norman Bodek:

• The Best Factory in the World, from his book, Kaikaku: “Pictures of areas of the factory or the office hung throughout the plant. Workers were encouraged to look at the pictures and talk about them together, then to make improvements.”
• Lean Six Sigma - A Perspective, “Lean focuses on identifying value as perceived by the customer and then eliminating everything that isn�t value, the waste, out of the process. Lean comes from the industrial engineering discipline, whereas Six Sigma comes out of the statistical quality control discipline. Six Sigma focuses on reducing variability in the key output variables that are important to the customer.”