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Advance Praise

“Jerome does not only master the Lean Six Sigma/Hoshin Kanri theories, but
he also lived them. He implemented them in several companies and delivered
results. I have had the opportunity to witness it directly, and it was spectacular.
Jerome can quickly engage the most skeptical colleagues and align them behind
his plan and deliver results. I highly recommend his book, a small investment
that will help you deliver great shareholder value. Everybody can benefit from it,
great reading.”

Patrick Deconinck
3M Senior Vice President, retired

“Jerome Hamilton is truly an expert in understanding how to apply the concepts

of Lean across the enterprise while delivering sustainable results. I would highly
recommend this book to any leader who is looking to give their enterprise com-
petitive advantage and truly become a Lean leader.”

Jon Hartman
Vice President, North American Operations
World Kitchen LLC

“A must-read for those seeking to have a sustainable impact! Jerome Hamilton

has been a student of Lean for many years. His unique insights, his learning from
the masters of the Toyota Production System and his practical experiences lead-
ing and executing in multiple organizations are passionately demonstrated in this
work. The Student has become the Coach and Teacher.”

Dr. Tracy Joshua

Vice President, Procurement
The Kellogg Company
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Make Your Business
a Lean Business
How to Create Enduring
Market Leadership
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Make Your Business
a Lean Business
How to Create Enduring
Market Leadership

Paul C. Husby
Jerome Hamilton
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
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Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Names: Husby, Paul C., author. | Hamilton, Jerome, author.

Title: Make your business a lean business : how to create enduring market leadership / Paul C. Husby
and Jerome Hamilton.
Description: Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017008209| ISBN 9781439829998 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138082137 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Lean manufacturing. | Production management. | Organizational effectiveness.
Classification: LCC TS155 .H859 2018 | DDC 658.5--dc23
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Contents

Authors.............................................................................................................. xv
Introduction................................................................................................... xvii

1 The Lean Enterprise Operational Management System Overview..... 1

Origin and Evolution of Lean............................................................................. 1
The Story............................................................................................................. 1
Lean System......................................................................................................... 8
LEOMS—World’s Best Operational Model....................................................... 10
Lean System Values............................................................................................14
LEOMS Purpose.................................................................................................14
Lean Enterprise Organization............................................................................15
Lean Application Trends....................................................................................16
From Operational to Transactional Processes...............................................16
Product Design and Development....................................................................17
IT........................................................................................................................17
Finance.............................................................................................................. 18
Human Resources............................................................................................. 18
Customer Service.............................................................................................. 18
Marketing........................................................................................................... 18
Sales................................................................................................................... 18
From Manufacturing to Services Industries...................................................19
From the Shop Floor to the Enterprise......................................................... 20
References......................................................................................................... 20
2 Why Lean Enterprise?....................................................................... 21
What Is a Lean Enterprise?............................................................................... 21
Why Should Every Enterprise Adopt the LEOMS?........................................... 22
U.S. Company Sustainability......................................................................... 22
Becoming a Lean Enterprise Will Enhance Strategic and Operational
Competitiveness............................................................................................ 23
LEOMS Focuses Organizational Resources and Processes.............................. 27
Five Demonstrable Reasons Why LEOMS Is the Best Operational
Management System......................................................................................... 28
References......................................................................................................... 30

vii
viii ◾ Contents

3 Business Strategy-Driven Lean Enterprise....................................... 31

Strategy-Driven Lean System.............................................................................31
How Does the LEOMS Increase Profit?............................................................ 32
Reduces Cost of Goods Sold........................................................................ 33
Reduces Labor Costs..................................................................................... 33
Reduces Materials Cost................................................................................. 34
Reduces Future Fixed Asset Cost................................................................. 34
Reduces Working Capital Cost...................................................................... 35
Enables Increased Top Line Sales and Reduces SG&A Cost....................... 35
Enables Increased Brand Value.................................................................... 36
Sales Growth..................................................................................................... 36
SG&A Cost Reduction....................................................................................... 36
What Are the Requirements for Sustainable Market Leadership?.................... 37
Lean Enterprise................................................................................................. 38
Lean Enterprise Business Model...................................................................... 38
Strategic Components................................................................................... 39
Operational Model Components.................................................................. 39
Lean Enterprise Business Model Implementation Framework—A Roadmap.... 42
Summary........................................................................................................... 50
Reference........................................................................................................... 50
4 Engaging Leadership and Preparing the Culture Change Plan........ 51
Assuring Organization-Wide Change Initiative Success...................................51
Three to Five Year Implementation Time Horizon to Achieve
Sustainability: Think Long Term, Act with Urgency........................................ 52
Step 1. Lean Enterprise Implementation Transformation Leadership
Engagement....................................................................................................... 54
Top Leadership’s Lean Enterprise Transformation Roles
and Responsibilities....................................................................................... 54
CEO Must Get the Transformation Started Off on the Right Foot.......... 54
Top Leadership Team Engagement........................................................... 56
Step 2. Leadership Team Preparation for Success............................................ 58
Learn Proven Approaches to Managing Transformational Change............. 58
Leaders Must Develop a Working Understanding of the Lean
Enterprise Operational System..................................................................... 59
Step 3. Define Required Culture Changes....................................................... 60
Business in the Twenty-First Century........................................................... 60
What Is Organizational Culture?................................................................... 60
Culture as the Distinctive Differentiating Ingredient of Competitive
Advantage.......................................................................................................61
NUMMI Motors Success Story.......................................................................61
Organization Culture Types and Assessment............................................... 64
What Is Organizational Culture?............................................................... 64
 Contents ◾ ix

A Framework to Understand and Change Culture....................................... 66

Organizational Culture Profile...................................................................... 69
The Preferred Company Culture for Lean Operational Management
System Implementation Success................................................................... 70
Defining the Preferred Operations Culture to Enable the LEOMS.............. 73
Culture Change Example.............................................................................. 82
Midwest Manufacturing Company (MMC) Culture Change Example...... 82
Midwest Mfg. Now and Preferred Culture Assessments.......................... 82
Culture Change Strategic Action Agenda..................................................... 85
What the Change Means and Does Not Mean............................................. 86
Step 4. Leadership Training and Development................................................ 88
Lean Manager’s Culture Change Responsibilities......................................... 88
Management Skills Profile Assessment............................................................ 90
Ready to Go.................................................................................................. 92
One Last Reminder........................................................................................... 92
References......................................................................................................... 93
5 Lean Enterprise Transformation Preparation and Launch............... 95
Enterprise Culture (Enabler or Disabler?)......................................................... 95
Lean Leadership—People and Process............................................................ 96
Lean Leadership Is about People and Process............................................. 96
Senior and Middle Management Roles and Responsibilities....................... 97
Leading by Focusing on People and Process to Achieve
Performance Excellence............................................................................ 98
Winning by Process...................................................................................... 98
Lean Enterprises Have the “Mind of Toyota”........................................... 98
Organization Structure and Business Process Design..................................... 99
The Lean Enterprise Organizational Structure............................................. 99
Lean Enterprise Operational Management System.......................................... 99
Process Design.................................................................................................102
Problem Solving...............................................................................................103
PDCA—Plan–Do–Check–Act.......................................................................104
Frontline Management and Team Members....................................................105
Team Leader Role.........................................................................................105
Team Member Role and Selection.............................................................. 106
Getting a Financial Return by Creating a Culture through Investing
in People..................................................................................................... 106
Lean Enterprise Operational Planning and Execution Management............ 108
Hoshin Kanri—The LEOMS’s PDCA Business Planning Process.............. 108
Effects of Misalignment................................................................................109
The Solution—Hoshin Kanri Purpose........................................................112
Why Hoshin Kanri?..................................................................................113
True North................................................................................................113
x ◾ Contents

Lean Enterprise Planning and Execution Management..........................114

X-Matrix....................................................................................................114
Catch Ball................................................................................................. 115
A3..............................................................................................................116
When Is an A3 Required?............................................................................118
Who Does the A3?.......................................................................................118
Applying A3 within the Hoshin Kanri Process...............................................118
Periodic Review Process, the C in PDCA—Bowler....................................118
Hoshin Kanri Implementation Key Success Factors...................................... 120
Management Must Own the Process.......................................................... 120
Participation Spans All Management Layers...............................................121
Identify and Ask the Right Questions.........................................................121
Deviation Requires Immediate Containment..............................................121
Schedule and Perform Audits Regularly according to the Plan..................122
Communicate Results and Hold the Organization Accountable................122
Organizational Deployment Approach and Model.....................................122
Manage Implementation through an Executive Level Lean Leader...........124
Training Process...............................................................................................124
Training Method...........................................................................................124
Audit and Review........................................................................................ 126
Review and Finalize the Business Case......................................................127
What Is the Compelling Vision? Formulating and Communicating
the Cause......................................................................................................... 128
Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage—Ten Steps to Success............129
Step 1. Commit to Investing in Startup Resources......................................129
Step 2. Manage the Plan............................................................................. 130
Step 3. Anticipate and Plan How You Will Overcome Resistance
to Change.....................................................................................................131
Step 4. Develop a Communication Plan......................................................133
Step 5. Launch Lean Enterprise.................................................................. 134
LEOMS’s Launch Readiness Assessment................................................. 134
Step 6. Selecting and Training the Implementation Teams........................135
Step 7. Make Lean Enterprise a Company Wide Reality.............................135
Step 8. Build and Maintain Momentum by Achieving Early Results......... 136
Step 9. Relentless Pursuit of the End State................................................. 136
Step 10. Conduct Regular Operational Reviews at All Levels....................137
Wave 1: Strategic Alignment............................................................................139
Launching the LEOMS Implementation...........................................................140
MMC Hardwiring Strategic and Operational Plan TTI’s.................................141
MMC LEOMS Implementation Plan.................................................................142
LEOMS Implementation...................................................................................145
Adopting the LEOMS...................................................................................145
References........................................................................................................146
 Contents ◾ xi

6 Lean Enterprise Operational Management System Factory

Operations Implementation.............................................................147
The Goal of LEOMS’s Seven Waves................................................................148
LEOMS’s Wave Implementation Model............................................................149
Implementation Schedule................................................................................150
LEOMS’s Leadership......................................................................................... 151
Developing Team Members into an Army of Problem-Solving Scientists.....153
Leaders as Teacher and Coaches.................................................................153
Train the Trainers.........................................................................................154
Team Members’ Organizational Role and Responsibilities.............................155
Training Method...............................................................................................157
Lean Coach Development Assessment............................................................157
Wave 2..............................................................................................................159
VSM Assessment and Future State...............................................................159
Wave 2 LEOMS Implementation Dashboard...............................................159
Plant Material Flow Plan Target State..............................................................160
Defining Value Streams...................................................................................161
VSM—Assessing the System and Planning Improvement..............................162
Goal: Achieve the Value Stream “Target State”...............................................164
Step 1. Value Stream Mapping Example: MMC...........................................165
Shipping....................................................................................................165
Packaging..................................................................................................166
Assembly...................................................................................................166
Slitting, Forming, and Painting................................................................167
Current State Value-Added Time and Performance................................167
Step 2: Creating the Future State.................................................................167
Step 3: Third, Future State, and Current State Maps Are Compared
to Define Improvement Projects..................................................................169
MMC Value Stream Improvement Projects..............................................170
Initiate PFEP.................................................................................................173
Define and Manage Projects Using A3 and Bowler...................................173
Wave 3..............................................................................................................175
Building the Foundation: Wave 3................................................................175
Continuous Improvement through Problem Solving..................................177
Practical Benefits of 5S.............................................................................181
Engagement Starts Now—Start Creating the Ninjutsu............................182
5S Scorecard.............................................................................................185
Set Up Glass Wall Areas..............................................................................185
Wave 4............................................................................................................. 186
Redesigning Work Cells: Wave 4................................................................ 186
Work Cell Redesign......................................................................................187
Effective Process Design......................................................................... 188
The Natural Law of Waste...........................................................................193
xii ◾ Contents

Creating a “Run to Standard and Target” Culture.......................................193

Discipline in Process................................................................................193
Improvement Progress through Wave 4......................................................199
Wave 5............................................................................................................. 200
Creating Synchronized Flow....................................................................... 200
Creating Level Pull across Value Stream Systems.......................................201
Creating Finished Good Supermarkets........................................................201
Regulating the System Rhythm—Pacemaker..............................................201
In-Process Supermarkets............................................................................. 202
Create Integrated Material Delivery Routes................................................ 202
MMC Generation 2 Current State Value Stream Map................................. 203
Wave 6............................................................................................................. 205
Continuous Improvement........................................................................... 205
Organizational PDCA Responsibilities........................................................ 206
Continuous Improvement Cycle................................................................. 207
Wave 7..............................................................................................................212
Annual Strategic Planning Process..............................................................212
Build Expected Benefits into Annual Business Planning...........................213
Summary..........................................................................................................214
References........................................................................................................214
7 Applying the LEOMS to Enterprise Supply Chains.........................217
SCOR Supply Chain Design, Assessment, and Improvement Processes........219
SCOR Level 1....................................................................................................221
SCOR Levels 2 and 3........................................................................................221
SCOR Level 4 Work Flow and Level 5 Automation....................................... 223
SCOR Metrics................................................................................................... 224
Supply Chain Improvement Example: MMC.................................................. 227
Strategy-Driven Supply Chain Design, Operation, and Improvement...... 227
MMC Business Situation Analysis............................................................... 228
MMC Value Discipline and Proposition-Driven Supply Chain Design,
Operations, and Improvement.................................................................... 229
Value Proposition and Strategy Drive Operational Attributes
and Metric Dashboard.................................................................................232
Creating Supply Chain Dashboards.........................................................232
Reviewing Strategy...................................................................................... 234
SCOR Benchmarking Results.................................................................. 234
Analyzing Competitors.............................................................................235
Determining Parity, Advantage, and Superior Performance...................... 236
Financial and Operational Benchmarking Sources....................................237
MMC Market Situation Analysis...................................................................237
Creating Value for Customers..................................................................... 238
Gathering Customer Information................................................................ 238
Year 2 Business Plan................................................................................... 240
 Contents ◾ xiii

MMC Business Current State................................................................... 240

MMC Year 2 Operational Improvement Plan......................................... 240
Business Plan Operational and Financial Targets to Improve................... 240
Expected Competitive Improvement...........................................................241
Improving Supply Chain Performance to Meet the Targets....................... 242
Supply Chain Current State..................................................................... 242
Diagnosis—Find Opportunities to Improve............................................... 243
Documenting the Supply Chain Current State........................................... 243
Setting Supply Operational Improvement Targets..................................... 246
Establishing Benchmark Targets..................................................................247
Supply Chain Improvement Plan................................................................ 248
MMC Year 2 Results.....................................................................................249
MMC Year 2 Operational Review................................................................249
Benchmark Review......................................................................................249
Supply Chain Competitive Strategy Assessment.........................................251
Enabling the Supply Chain..........................................................................252
References........................................................................................................253
8 LEOMS Application to Transactional Processes............................. 255
Taiichi Ohno’s LEOMS Vision..........................................................................255
From Manufacturing to Services Industries.....................................................255
LEOMS Aligns Organizations to Increase Productivity and Quality..............257
From the Shop Floor to the Enterprise.......................................................... 258
From Supply Chain Operational Processes to Transactional Processes.........259
Increase Marketing Professionals’ Value-Added Time....................................259
Increase Sales Representatives’ Value-Added Time........................................259
Increase Customer Service Representatives’ Value-Added Time................... 260
Increase Product Development and Commercialization Processes’
Value-Added Time........................................................................................... 260
Increase Human Resources’ Value-Added Time.............................................261
Increase Finance and Accounting Services’ Value-Added Time.....................261
Increase IT Professionals and Systems’ Value-Added Time............................262
What Is the Process and Where to Start LEOMS’s Business Process
Improvement Implementation?....................................................................... 263
Segment Enterprise Business Processes......................................................... 263
Continuous Improvement Purpose and Goal................................................ 264
Strategic Processes...................................................................................... 265
Core Processes............................................................................................ 265
Infrastructure Processes.............................................................................. 265
MMC Transactional Process Segmentation..................................................... 265
Preparing Organizations for Continuous Process Improvement................... 266
Engaging Department Team Members to Improve Their Processes............. 266
Transactional Business Process Mapping....................................................... 268
MMC Order Fulfillment Process Improvement.............................................. 269
xiv ◾ Contents

Improving the Order Fulfillment Process.......................................................271

MMC Current State Order Fulfillment Process............................................271
Creating the MMC Order Fulfillment Process Future State........................... 272
Define Required Improvements......................................................................273
Year-End Review..............................................................................................275
Factory Operations Report..............................................................................275
Review Wrap-Up............................................................................................. 277
References....................................................................................................... 278

Appendix I: Book Resources for Practitioners...................................... 279

Appendix II: Taiichi Ohno Core Lean................................................... 283
Appendix III: Cameron and Quinn’s Culture Change Methodology
Value...................................................................................................... 305
Appendix IV: Benchmark Data Sources................................................ 307
Appendix V: Validation of the LEOMS’s Value....................................... 309
Index......................................................................................................311
Authors

Paul C. Husby completed a 38-year career with 3M including executive manage-

ment positions as the managing director of 3M Brazil, division vice president of
the Abrasives Division, and corporate staff vice president of Manufacturing and
Supply Chain Services. Husby’s career included a significant number of opera-
tional leadership assignments in manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain
prior to his executive leadership assignments. He graduated from the University
of Wisconsin, Stout, with a BS in industrial technology. Twelve years of his career
were spent in international assignments including Belgium, the United Kingdom,
and Brazil; he speaks Portuguese as a second language. Currently a supply chain
consultant with a passion for Lean manufacturing, he is also involved with Hope
Unlimited of Brazil as the vice president of the board of directors. Hope Unlimited
is a nonprofit organization that rescues and transforms the lives of Brazilian street
children.

Jerome Hamilton, the CEO of Open Therapeutics™, leads the company’s

scale and global expansion, as well as manages business development, sales,
marketing, and investor relations. He joined Open Therapeutics after serving as
Stratasys’ senior vice president of global operations, before which he was the
vice president of LEAN Six Sigma Operations, Corporate Quality and Acquisition
Integration for 3M. There, he played a major role in devising strategy and opera-
tional plans for the company’s largest business group, the Industrial Business
Group. He also led the company’s Masking and Surface Protection Business with
full P&L responsibility.
Hamilton earned his bachelor of general science from Morehouse College;
bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech; master of sci-
ence in engineering management from the University of Detroit, Mercy; and
master of science for international logistics from Georgia Tech. He is a graduate
of the Advanced Management Program, Harvard Business School.
Hamilton is a member of the Boards of Directors of Goodwill Easter Seals
Minnesota, Real Life 101, and V2SOFT. He was listed in the 2014 Savoy Magazine
list of Most Influential Blacks in Corporate America, and was recognized as one
of the Top 50 diversity professionals in the industry—Global Diversity List, sup-
ported by The Economist (globaldiversitylist.com).

xv
xvi ◾ Authors

In the coming months, Open Therapeutics will provide to global research-

ers a crowdsourcing web platform that will host freely available open pharma
and medical technologies framework, created by Jason Barkeloo and his team.
Scientists can freely adopt the open technologies and develop manuscripts on the
science they conduct around the technologies.

About Open Therapeutics LLC

Open Therapeutics is a 7-year old company that curates and develops open medical,
biopharma, and synthetic biology-based biotechnologies. Among the technologies
being freely opened and crowdsourced to the global community are essential
proteins for developing antibiotic and anticancer therapeutics, immuno­therapy
and oncolytics, and biomarker inducers. The company is headquartered in
Cincinnati, Ohio with laboratory operations in Covington, Kentucky, and Madrid,
Spain via its strategic partner, Bacmine SL (http://www.bacmine.com).
Introduction

What Will I Learn?

How my company can maximize the probability of being successful for
a hundred years or more.

Lean Enterprise, It Is about Having an Effective

Operational Management System
Who Needs This Book?
At least 85% of all companies in existence today! Why? Look at history and see
the probability of your company existing for the next 50 years. Of the 500 com-
panies listed on the S&P 500 in 1957, only 15% are listed today.1 Nearly half
of the 25 companies included in Peters & Waterman’s 1982 book In Search of
Excellence do not exist today.2 Is there really any reason to believe that we will
not see the same story repeating itself in the future? What should responsible
executives be doing to improve their companies’ chances of long-term survival?
All companies have an operational management system, but is it continuously
improving strategic competitive advantage, increasing operational execution
excellence, and lowering operational cost through daily continuous improvement
from an army of problem-solving scientists? If not, company CEOs and COOs
should start implementing the Lean Enterprise Operational Management Systems
(LEOMS) today as it will transform their companies, increase their value to cus-
tomers and investors, and improve employee satisfaction. The LEOMS will not
replace great strategy for companies with strong sustainable strategic competi-
tive advantage and differentiating competencies, but it will get the most out of
every company’s strategy, organization, processes, and assets. Lean is best known
for some of its methods and practices, often thought of as only relevant to sup-
ply chain and factory floor operations. This is a gross misconception and limits
the potential of Lean to improve enterprise-wide operational performance. This
book’s goal is to help you turn your company into a “Lean machine” that will
continuously accelerate the rate of improving its competitive advantage through

xvii
xviii ◾ Introduction

application of the LEOMS, thus creating a more sustainable Lean enterprise.

Its purpose is to change the common understanding of Lean from only an opera-
tions improvement system to a true enterprise operational management system.
Through this book, business leaders will learn about the LEOMS and how to
implement it by following the Seven Wave Implementation Process. Becoming a
Lean enterprise ensures effective implementation of business strategic goals and
priorities by aligning and optimizing all resources and holding annual and 3-year
improvement target owners accountable, and by maintaining a “laser focus” on
achieving their few critical targets. There appear to be numerous plausible expla-
nations for the absence of understanding the LEOMS’s importance in ­improving
performance and its snail-like widespread successful adoption. The six most rec-
ognized failure sources are addressed in this book:

1. Three quarters of TQM, reengineering, strategic planning, and downsizing ini-

tiatives have failed, most frequently because of the failure to recognize how the
company culture would react to required changes for success of the initiative.3
Lean must become part of the culture to be sustainably successful through vig-
orous application of the culture change process as described in Chapter 4.
2. There has not been a guidebook with a set of processes, practices, and tools
to follow during implementation of the LEOMS to achieve the strategic and
operational benefits of continually improving operational and strategic com-
petitive advantage.
3. Many commonly used Lean models such as the Toyota House are valuable
but speak to supply chain operations and not the entire enterprise, its dis-
tinctive competencies, and sources of strategic competitive advantage.
4. Typical Lean implementations are started in factory operations and built out
to customers and suppliers. This makes great sense and gets results, but
it also reinforces the perception of Lean as only relevant to supply chain
operations. In addition, TPS’s models like the Toyota House represent enor-
mous implicit knowledge and a multitude of processes, practices, and tools
that need to be made explicit for practitioners to be able to apply and to
understand their interrelationships within the whole system.
5. Applying Hoshin Kanri is growing, but still not widely adopted by compa-
nies as a component of their strategic and operational business planning and
execution management process. Hoshin Kanri resolves many issues such as
misalignment and lack of focus. No doubt these are sources of significant
waste, but they are invisible wastes,4 which are hard to measure and quan-
tify. Most companies are so accustomed to norms of cordial anarchy and
plan execution failures that these wastes continuously cause frustration but
also are viewed as normal.
6. Many academics and university courses teach Lean more as an improvement
methodology, sometimes even positioned as comparable to Six Sigma. Very
few get to the heart of Lean as the best enterprise operational management
system in existence.
 Introduction ◾ xix

Whatever the causes, little real progress has been made in advancing under-
standing and sustainable success of LEOMS applications. This book is intended
to contribute to advancing LEOMS application success. The purpose of this book
is to reposition the discussion of Lean from a set of tools and processes to focus
on Lean as Taiichi Ohno positioned it in his book Toyota Production System as
a “system that will work for any type of business.”5 It is the goal of this book
to stimulate a new dialogue, repositioning the Lean discussion to focus on the
LEOMS. The book introduces new system models as part of an implementation
guide to assist in placing the focus on the LEOMS and includes references to
great contributions by a multitude of authors during the last 35 years.

Why Should You Read This Book?

Authors Jerome Hamilton and Paul Husby bring more than 60 years of opera-
tional management, global business executive, and international experience in
businesses in many market segments, and bring their knowledge and perspective
to the discussion of creating and sustaining a Lean enterprise.

Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: The Lean Enterprise Operational Management System Overview
Chapter 1 provides background and chronology of manufacturing opera-
tional system development, highlighting the genius of Taiichi Ohno, who, see-
ing the fragmented pieces, developed a very logical total enterprise operational
management system that includes strategic plan deployment, operational plan
management, and continuous improvement elements. The chapter also identifies
applications of the LEOMS’s principles, tools, and thinking to business organiza-
tion processes outside of plant operations.
Chapter 2: Why Lean Enterprise?
Chapter 2 introduces Lean enterprise and its operational management system,
identifying four of the LEOMS’s distinctive differentiating attributes that validate it
as the best operational management system, with no close contenders.
Chapter 3: Business Strategy-Driven Lean Enterprise
Chapter 3 demonstrates how the Lean enterprise business model continuously
drives operational improvement to increase an enterprise’s strategic and opera-
tional competitive advantage. This is accomplished through rigorous application
of the Lean enterprise business model ensuring that enterprise’s strategy con-
nects and drives Lean’s powerful operational management system to continuously
improve strategic, financial, and operational performance.
Chapter 4: Engaging Leadership and Preparing the Culture Change Plan
Chapter 4 deals with the necessity of ensuring that company culture will enable
successful creation of an army of continuous improvement scientists. Company
culture related to people management and development is the single biggest
xx ◾ Introduction

reason for failure of companies to achieve their LEOMS implementation goals. A

basic tenet of cultures is that they only accept change that fits within the sphere
of truths as it is interpreted by existing culture beliefs and norms, unless there is
a cause and purpose for changing that provides a compelling argument to justify
changing existing beliefs and norms. Culture change requires strong, persistent top
leadership that builds an organizational army of believers who embrace the change
because it is in their personal and the company’s long-term best interest.
Chapter 5: Lean Enterprise Transformation Preparation and Launch
Chapter 5 addresses preparation of company leadership to understand the
LEOMS, leadership roles within the system, an overview of the seven implemen-
tation waves, completion of wave 1: strategic alignment, and 10 launch prepara-
tion steps. The chapter walks through the steps to create and deploy effective
operational plans assuring implementation management integrity through appli-
cation of the LEOMS’s Hoshin Kanri operational planning and execution man-
agement process. Hoshin Kanri is a logical and rigorous process to define 1- and
3-year targets in a process that also aligns organizational priorities to maintain
consensus, clarity, and commitment to achieving defined targets. The chapter
concludes with an application of wave 1 at MMC, the company we created that
will be used in the remaining chapters to provide application examples.
Chapter 6: Lean Enterprise Operational Management System Factory
Operations Implementation
Chapter 6 covers waves 2 through 7, including the deliverables and informa-
tion required for each wave along with application examples at MMC.
Chapter 7: Applying the LEOMS to Enterprise Supply Chains
Chapter 7 covers the application of the LEOMS principles and tools to the
wider supply chain. The chapter introduces a tool set called the supply chain
operations reference model, which includes all processes required for an effective
supply chain. The model is a great aid to quickly identify what specific process
needs to be improved to either eliminate failure or improve supply chain perfor-
mance. MMC application examples are included to assist readers in understand-
ing and applying the LEOMS to supply chains.
Chapter 8: LEOMS Application to Transactional Processes
Chapter 8 addresses applying Lean principles and practices to transactional
business processes utilizing swim lane process mapping tools to documenting
and improving transactional business processes along with MMC application
examples.

Why This Book Matters

The competitive environment continues to intensify.

◾◾ Global market access continues to grow as more and more countries around
the world participate in the global economy. This trend is likely to continue
 Introduction ◾ xxi

as underdeveloped countries are recognizing great value through building

“free trade”-based economies and in the process reducing poverty. Newer
strong players like China, India, and Brazil are asserting themselves both
politically and economically. Their strong and growing influence is being felt
in the world.
◾◾ Changing customer needs and wants are being greatly influenced by such
trends as the desire to have a smaller environmental footprint. Customers are
expecting to receive greater value from their purchases. They want them to
last longer, be aesthetically pleasing, and be easy to dispose of at the end of
their life through recycling or reuse.
◾◾ Developing country product and service advantages will continue as there
are still many countries with significant populations that are just entering
the global competitive marketplace. Sustaining competitive advantages in
developed countries will be very dependent on innovation, optimized use
of resources, along with education and training to develop new generations
who are prepared with the knowledge and skills required to be employed in
this new economy and to rebuild and sustain the middle class, the founda-
tion of a long-term sustainable economy.
◾◾ Increasing and volatile transportation costs will continue to be a great chal-
lenge and will complicate decisions such as how to configure your supply
chain and where to source products. While it is hard to predict future petro-
leum cost, it certainly is very likely to continue to increase until countries
like the United States become self-sufficient and export enough to influence
a free market price for oil and gas along with developing wind and solar
energy sources.
◾◾ The trend of shorter product life cycles is likely to continue, as global mar-
kets become even more competitive, resulting in greater speed to market of
new product ideas and technological innovation.
◾◾ New materials technologies represent a potential for great advantage and a
competitive threat. They represent the ability to create products with new
functionality and features, while also enabling possible entry into new mar-
kets with unique and higher-performing products.
◾◾ Developing countries are producing greatly increasing numbers of engineers
and scientists. China alone produces six to seven times as many engineers as
the United States. This is likely to be one of the most important of all these
trends, as developing countries gain financial and technological know-how
and can leverage the tremendous number of engineers and scientists into
better, cheaper, and more advanced products.
◾◾ Information technology is transforming business at a speed and scope that
has never been experienced in history, creating disruptive changes such
as Amazon’s real threat to make obsolete retail stores, as they continue to
enhance their service capabilities and supply sources along with the growing
application of “Big Data,” allowing companies to segment and target custom-
ers in ways that were not practical in the past.
xxii ◾ Introduction

◾◾ Free and open markets in the last three decades have greatly reduced global
poverty; in fact, it has been the greatest antipoverty program in history and
strengthened relationships among participants. It has also contributed to
reducing the purchasing power of middle-class populations in most devel-
oped countries, particularly those without high-value job skills and/or uni-
versity degrees.

The Goals of This Book

◾◾ To help readers understand Lean as an enterprise operational management
system.
◾◾ To supply readers with an implementation guide and knowledge of pro-
cesses, practices, and tools to implement the LEOMS.
◾◾ To assist those who take the challenge of becoming a Lean enterprise to
overcome the most common causes of failure or disappointing result by
adapting their company culture to be compatible with Lean’s people man-
agement culture.
◾◾ To see the LEOMS as the best enterprise operational business model avail-
able in the world and not simply as a set of tools and techniques applied to
reduce cost and increase speed.
◾◾ To position adoption of Lean as an enterprise transformation versus simply
changes to operational practice. This will make an order-of-magnitude dif-
ference in results achieved from implementation of the LEOMS.
◾◾ To provide business leaders with foundational understanding, a roadmap,
and tools to transform their business into a Lean enterprise.

Who Can Benefit from This Book?

◾◾ Business leaders of all levels—no other Lean business transformation book
available is written for business leaders by business leaders.
◾◾ Strategic planners will benefit by gaining understanding of the LEOMS and
how to integrate its practices into their strategic and operational planning
processes.
◾◾ Academics will be better able to teach the LEOMS based on the system
model and explanation of its components as applied to all enterprise
functions.

How Should Readers Use This Book?

A roadmap is presented throughout the book, allowing business leaders
and strategic planners to follow step-by-step development of their LEOMS
 Introduction ◾ xxiii

implementation plan and its deployment. Concepts and principles are presented
in each chapter followed by application examples and author experiences, expert
quotations, and comments.
Valuable references are included for readers to develop more understanding of
specific tools and practices and their interrelationships. These references will be
in shaded text boxes, for example:

“Therefore, all considerations and improvement ideas, when boiled down,

must be tied to cost reduction. Saying this in reverse, the criterion for all deci-
sion is whether cost reduction can be achieved.”

Taiichi Ohno
Toyota Production System, p. 53, Productivity Press, 1988

Author experiences and insights are provided for readers to provide more
details about specific tools and practices. These references will be in unshaded
text boxes:

In the mid-1990’s I was the Managing Director of 3M Brazil and my leader-

ship team and I spent three weeks during one year with Oscar Motomura at
Amana-Keya Leadership Development and learned the value of making invis-
ible cost explicit and discussing them openly.

Paul Husby

What Can We Learn by Looking at Industry

Laggards and Leaders?
Laggards
What can we learn from the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler? GM had been in
decline for decades. Numerous initiatives were started to transform GM; unfortu-
nately, none of them were finished. There were two initiatives that together held
promise to truly transform GM:

1. NUMMI Motors, a joint venture with Toyota and GM as partners. Toyota

managed the plant and taught GM Lean, training numerous engineers and
managers. In the 30 years since the formation of NUMMI, why had GM not
completely transformed their businesses and operations before being forced
into bankruptcy? Yes, some plants were transformed but they had 30 years.
xxiv ◾ Introduction

2. Saturn was established to set up a new kind of car company. Saturn estab-
lished a very good brand; customers were loyal and most were part of a
Saturn cult. Unfortunately, the status quo won, and this grand experiment
was killed.

We have a leadership crisis in many U.S. companies. What has been accom-
plished during the last 35 years as we started to understand Lean? We have
gotten to a point where many Lean tools and practices are applied in U.S. com-
panies. Unfortunately, the understanding of Lean as an enterprise operational
management system is practiced in only a very small percentage of companies
who proclaim that they are “doing Lean.” The real power of Lean is yet untapped
in the United States.

Leaders
We believe that in the coming decades, only developed country-based companies
that have sustainable strategic advantage and embrace Lean as their operational
management system will thrive for 100 years. Companies in North America and
Europe will be facing powerful competitors from China, India, and Brazil along
with others who will have the technological skills as good as or better than U.S.
and European companies. We will see the next round of U.S. company deaths as
they fail to grasp and internalize global competitive threats to their survival. It will
be a repeat of the 1970s and 1980s when a plethora of traditional U.S. companies
ended up on the scrap heap of failed companies. Those choosing to become a Lean
enterprise and adopting the LEOMS will improve their probability of success. Maybe
a better enterprise operational management system will come along, but until then,
following a path laid out by Taiichi Ohno is the only proven path to sustainable
operational excellence that supports and enables strategic competitive advantage.
Lean car companies such as Toyota, Honda, and Subaru have a maniacal focus
on elimination of all waste and creating customer value. They are consistent lead-
ers in reliability and resale value. Additionally, they are recognized as environ-
mental leaders having reliable products and minimal environmental impact from
their products and production processes. Because of their maniacal focus, it is
also likely that they will be leaders in improving employee health through chang-
ing their lifestyles and preventive medicine practices, thus reducing long-term
healthcare costs while reinforcing committed employees. Lean philosophy chal-
lenges traditional thinking of treating company, customer, company employee,
and community interests as conflicting, believing one must lose for the others to
gain. Instead, it accepts this apparent paradox of competing interests and uses it as
a catalyst for innovating solutions that allow all interests to be respected. A great
example of respecting company and employee interest occurred during the reces-
sion of 2007 through 2009; Toyota laid off its contract workers at its Texas truck
plant, but instead of laying off permanent workers, they were challenged to use
their problem-solving skills to find millions of dollars in savings. Toyota improved
 Introduction ◾ xxv

its long-term competitiveness and reinforced employee commitment. Fortunately,

today most automotive companies are adopting Lean, but one only has to examine
current 2016 Toyota operating margins compared to Ford, GM, and Chrysler to see
that they still have a long way to go in closing their competitive gap with Toyota.
The proven path to achieving and sustaining competitiveness is becoming a
Lean enterprise. Lean is most often viewed as just having to do with manufac-
turing or transactional operations. It has not been taken on board by business
leaders as a business philosophy and system, capable of continuously increasing
enterprise value for customers and shareholders, a matter of long-term survival,
while building high commitment in company employees.

“The Toyota Production System, however, is not just a production system. I am

confident it will reveal its strength as a management system adapted to today’s
era of global markets and high-level computerized information system.”

Taiichi Ohno
Toyota Production System, p. xv, Productivity Press, 1988

So what about Toyota’s fall, with multiple recalls and the loss of confidence by
their customers? What does this tell us about relevance and value of the Toyota
Production System in today’s world? In a 2007 interview in the HBR July–August
2007 edition,6 Katsuaki Watanabe, president of Toyota, made three revealing
statements:

◾◾ “I realize that our systems maybe overstretched… We must make that issue
visible.”
◾◾ “If a time comes at Toyota when I need to put my foot on the brake pedal
rather than on the accelerator, I won’t hesitate to do so.”
◾◾ “It is my job to pull the Andon cord.”

Toyota leadership demonstrated that they were human, although Watanabe-

san demonstrated that he understood the risk; he did not take any action to set
in place early detection signals to tell him that it was time to act. Three years
later with embarrassing U.S. market quality and safety issues, the seriousness of
the problem was recognized. This failure cost Watanabe-san his position and
Toyota hundreds of millions of dollars as they worked to recover their highly
esteemed reputation. It was serious enough that Akio Toyoda, Toyota president
and CEO, testified before the U.S. Congress on February 23, 20107 to explain
what had happened at Toyota:

◾◾ “Toyota has, for the past few years, been expanding its business rapidly.
Quite frankly, I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too
quick.”
xxvi ◾ Introduction

◾◾ “I would point out here that Toyota’s priority has traditionally been the fol-
lowing: First, Safety; Second, Quality; and Third, Volume. These priorities
became confused, and we were not able to stop, think, and make improve-
ments as much as we were able to before, and our basic stance to listen to
customers’ voices to make better products has weakened somewhat.”
◾◾ “We pursued growth over the speed at which we were able to develop our
people and our organization, and we should sincerely be mindful of that.”
◾◾ “I regret that this has resulted in safety issues described in the recalls we
face today, and I am deeply sorry for any accidents that Toyota drivers have
experienced.”

Toyota proved that they were human, as their great success of the past few
decades led to a false confidence and resulted in making expansion decisions
that violated principles that built their success. The third point in Akio Toyoda’s
explanation gets to the heart of the matter: Toyota growth outpaced their ability
to train personnel sufficiently to be able to work within and sustain the Toyota
Production System. It has been passed on to new Toyota operations and people
through a process of experienced teachers, with great depth of knowledge,
personally coaching new people. This process was typically accomplished one-
on-one and went on for extended periods of time. Toyota wanted new people
to understand not only the visible dimensions of TPS but also all the invisible,
for example, the invisible depth of understanding of how one element of TPS
was interconnected to many other elements. In the end, this knowledge trans-
fer process, which created their success, also was a limitation that they did not
properly respect. Having read Taiichi Ohno’s book many times, I get this! Each
time I read the book, I see something new that I previously did not catch or
understand. Toyota’s recent failures were not caused by a failure of their system
but a failure of their leadership. I think the open and candid statements of Akio
Toyoda reflect a somewhat unique event and the top man at Toyota took owner-
ship for company failure; it was very refreshing! The bottom line is this: sustain-
able twenty-first century enterprises will require creating customer value through
innovation, speed, service excellence, and competitive cost. The companies who
have great innovation and true Lean enterprises will be market leaders, as they
will demonstrate speed to market and cost competitiveness, enhancing their
value and leveraging their innovation in support of their customers.

Summary
This book is offered with total admiration and respect for all the authors and
contributors to TPS–LEOMS over the past 35 years who have helped to open
the eyes and educate all of us who have passion for Taiichi Ohno’s LEOMS. Its
purpose is to create a more visible and complete model of the LEOMS, making
it more understandable to business leaders and practitioners, thus contributing
 Introduction ◾ xxvii

to increased strategic and operational benefits of becoming a Lean enterprise.

Taiichi Ohno, in his book Toyota Production System,5 challenged all of us TPS
believers to contribute to strengthening his system. This book is offered in the
spirit of his challenge.
Final note: Throughout the rest of the book, the Lean Enterprise Operational
Management System will be referred to by its complete name and the acronym
LEOMS.

References
1. Gary Cokins, Why do large companies fail? Analytics, June 2012.
2. Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence, New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1982.
3. Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational
Culture, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
4. Oscar Motomura, Managing the Invisible, São Paulo, Brasil: Amana Key, 1998.
5. Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System, New York: Productivity Press, 1988.
6. Katsuaki Watanabe, President of Toyota, interview by the Harvard Business Review,
July–August 2007.
7. Akio Toyoda, President and CEO, Toyota, U.S. Congressional Testimony, February
23, 2010.
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Another random document with
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of society gives the power to the mass of people to assert its own
tastes and demand its own enjoyments. To such a development the
universal success of Herz and Thalberg is related. It is because of
still further development that their wonders have become
commonplaces, not because either their purpose or their music is
intrinsically contemptible. Both these are respectable as
manifestations of energy and great labor; and that the two great
players achieved a victory which won the applause of the whole
world, indicates a streak of the hero in the cosmos of both.

III
We may conceive Herz and Thalberg each to be an infant Hercules,
strangling serpents in his cradle, if we compare them with Franz
Liszt, who, above all else, represents virtuosity grown to fully heroic
proportions. He was the great and universal hero in the history of
music. He cannot be dissociated from the public, the general world
over which he established his supremacy by feats of sheer muscular
or technical skill. Even the activity of his mind was essentially
empirical. Especially in the realm of pianoforte music he won his
unique place by colossal energy put to test or to experiment upon
the public through the instrument. The majority of his compositions in
this branch of music are tours de force.

His manifold activities in music all reveal the truly great virtuoso,
whom we may here define as an agent of highest efficiency between
a created art and the public to which it must be related. We will
presently analyze some of his compositions for the pianoforte, but
without presuming to draw from features of them so discovered any
conclusions as to their musical vitality or their æsthetic value. These
conclusions must be left to the wisdom and sense of posterity;
whatever they may prove to be, one cannot at present but recognize
in Liszt first and foremost the intermediary. He so conducted himself
in all his musical activities, which, taken in the inverse order of their
importance, show him as a writer upon subjects related to music, as
a conductor, as a composer, and as a pianist. He worked in an
indissoluble relation with the public, and by virtue of this relation
appears to us a hero of human and comprehensible shape, though
enormous, whose feet walked in the paths of men and women, and
whose head was not above the clouds in a hidden and secret
communion which we can neither define nor understand.

Many qualities in his character and in his person, which, of course,

are of no importance in estimating the value of his compositions,
made his peculiar relation with the public secure. His face was very
handsome, brilliantly so; he had a social charm which won for him a
host of friends in all the capitals of Europe; he was fascinating to
men and women in private, and in public exercised a seemingly
irresistible personal magnetism over his audiences. He was,
moreover, exceedingly generous and charitable, quick to befriend all
musicians, especially men younger than he, and to lend his aid in,
movements of public benefaction. He was an accomplished linguist,
and cosmopolitan, indeed international in his sympathies. As a
teacher he inspired his many pupils with an almost passionate
affection and feeling of loyal devotion. All these qualities set him
quite apart from the wizard Paganini, with whom alone his technical
mastery of his instrument was comparable. Paganini was wrapped in
mystery, whether he wove the veil himself or not; Liszt was
thoroughly a man of the world.

Liszt’s playing was stupendous. At least two influences fired him not
only to develop a technique which was limited only by the physically
impossible, but to establish himself as the unequalled player of the
age. Already as a youth when he first came to Paris this technique
was extraordinary, though probably not unmatched. It was the
wizardry of Paganini, whom he heard in Paris, that determined him
to seek an attainment hitherto undreamed of in skill with the
keyboard. This he achieved before he left Paris to journey away from
the world in Switzerland and Italy. During his absence Thalberg
came to Paris and took it by storm. Back came Liszt post-haste to
vanquish his rival and establish more firmly his threatened position.
The struggle was long and hotly fought, but the victory remained with
Liszt, who, though he had not that skill in a kind of melody playing
which was peculiar to Thalberg, towered far above his rival in virility,
in fire, and in variety.

We may thus imagine him established by force of arms as king of all

pianists. He never relinquished his royal prerogatives nor could he
tolerate a challenge of his power; but he proved himself most a hero
in the use to which he put this enormous power. He chose the
master’s highest privilege and made himself a public benefactor. It is
true that he never wholly discarded the outward trappings of royal
splendor. He played operatic fantasias like the rest; made, of his
own, fabrics which were of a splendor that was blinding. But the true
glory of his reign was the tribute he paid to men who had been
greater than kings in music and the service he rendered to his own
subjects in making known to them the masterpieces of these men,
the fugues of Bach, the last sonatas of Beethoven, the works of
Chopin. It was largely owing to Liszt that the general public was
educated to an appreciation of these treasures, even that it became
aware of its possession of them. It may be added that the pupils of
this man, who was the most outstanding and overpowering of all the
pianoforte virtuosi, made wholly familiar to the world a nobler
practice of virtuosity in service to great music. Here, however, must
be mentioned one great contemporary of Liszt’s, Clara Schumann,
who, possessed of greatest skill, made her playing, in even greater
degree than Liszt, the interpreter of great music. It is one of the
richest tributes to Liszt as a pianist that he may in some respects be
compared with that noble woman.

It seems to have been above all else the fire in Liszt’s playing which
made it what it was, a fire which showed itself in great flames of
sound, spreading with incredible rapidity up and down the keyboard,
which, like lightning, was followed by a prodigious thunder. Yet it was
a playing which might rival all the elements, furious winds,
tumultuous waters, very phenomena of sounds. Caricatures show
him in all sorts of amazing attitudes, and many draw him with more
than two hands, or more than five fingers to a hand. At the piano he
was like Jupiter with the thunder-bolts, Æolus with the winds of
heaven, Neptune with the oceans of the earth in his control. And at
the piano he made his way to the throne which perhaps no other will
ever occupy again.

Just what was the effect of Liszt’s accomplishments upon pianoforte

technique must be carefully considered, and such a consideration
will bring us to problems which we may venture to assert are of
profound interest to the pianist and to the musician. Broadly
speaking he expanded the range of technique enormously, which is
to say that he discovered many new effects and developed others
which had previously been but partially understood. The Douze
Études d’exécution transcendante may be taken to constitute a
registry of his technical innovations.

First, in these, and in all his music, he makes a free and almost
constant use of all the registers of the keyboard, the very low and the
very high more than they had been used before, and the middle with
somewhat more powerful scoring than was usual with any other
composers excepting Schumann. Particularly his use of the low
registers spread through the piano an orchestral thunder.

The ceaseless and rapid weaving together of the deepest and the
highest notes made necessary a wide, free movement of both arms,
and more remarkably of the left arm, because such rapid flights had
hardly been demanded of it before. The fourth étude, a musical
reproduction of the ride of Mazeppa, is almost entirely a study in the
movement of the arms, demanding of them, especially in the playing
of the inner accompaniment, an activity and control hardly less rapid
or less accurate than what a great part of pianoforte music had
demanded of the fingers.

It is in fact by recognizing the possibilities of movement in the arm

that Liszt did most to expand pianoforte technique. One finds not
only such an interplaying of the arms as that in ‘Mazeppa’ and other
of his compositions, but a playing of the arms together in octave
passages which leap over broadest distances at lightning speed.
Sometimes these passages are centred, or rather based, so to
speak, on a fixed point, from and to which the arms shoot out and
back, touching a series of notes even more remote from the base,
often being expected to cover the distance of nearly two octaves, as
in the beginning of the first concerto. There are samples of this
difficulty in ‘Mazeppa’; and also of other runs in octaves for both
hands, which are full of irregular and wide skips.

In the long and extremely rapid tremolos with which his music is
filled, it is again the arm which is exerted to new efforts. The last of
the études is a study in tremolo for the arm, and so is the first of the
Paganini transcriptions. The tremolo, it need hardly be said, is no
invention of Liszt’s, but no composer before him demanded either
such rapidity in executing it, or such a flexibility of the arm. The
tremolo divided between the two hands, as here in this last study,
and the rapid alternation of the two hands in the second study,
depend still further on the freedom of the arm. It is the arm that is
called upon almost ceaselessly in the tenth study; and the famous
Campanella in the Paganini series is only a tour de force in a lateral
movement of the arm, swinging on the wrist.

The series, usually chromatic, of free chords which one finds surging
up and down the keyboard, often for both hands, may well paralyze
the unpracticed arm; the somewhat bombastic climaxes, in which, à
la Thalberg, he makes a huge noise by pounding chords, are a task
for the arm. All of the last part of the eleventh étude, Harmonies du
soir, is a study for the arm. Indeed even the wide arpeggios, running
from top to bottom of the keyboard in bolder flight than Thalberg
often ventured upon, the rushing scales, in double or single notes,
the countless cadenzas and runs for both hands, all of these, which
depend upon velocity for their effect, are possible only through the
unmodified liberation of the arm.

All this movement of the arm over wide distances and at high speed
makes possible the broad and sonorous effects which may be said
to distinguish his music from that of his predecessors and his
contemporaries. It makes possible his thunders and his winds, his
lightnings and his rains. Thus he created a sort of grand style which
every one must admit to be imposing.
Beyond these effects it is difficult to discover anything further so
uniquely and so generally characteristic in his pianoforte style. He
demands an absolutely equal skill in both hands, frequently
throughout an entire piece. He calls for the most extreme velocity in
runs of great length, sometimes in whole pages; and for as great
speed in executing runs of double notes as in those of single. A
study like the Feux-Follets deals with a complex mixture of single
and double notes. All these things, however, can be found in the
works of Schumann, or Chopin, or even Beethoven. Yet it must be
said that no composer ever made such an extended use of them, nor
exacted from the player quite so much physical endurance and
sustained effort. Moreover, against the background of his effects of
the arm, they take on a new light, no matter how often they had a
share in the works of other composers.

It can hardly be denied, furthermore, that this new light which they
seem to give his music, by which it appears so different from that of
Schumann and even more from that of Chopin, is also due to the use
to which he puts them. With Liszt these things are indisputably used
wholly as effects. Liszt follows Thalberg, or represents a further
development of the idea of pianoforte music which Thalberg
represents. He deals with effects,—with, as we have said elsewhere
of Thalberg, masses of sound. Very few of his compositions for the
pianoforte offer a considerable exception, and with these we shall
have to do presently. The great mass of études, concert or salon
pieces, and transcriptions, those works in which he displays this
technique, are virtuoso music. He shows himself in them a
sensationalist composer. Therefore the music suffers by the
necessary limitations mentioned in connection with Herz and
Thalberg, with the difference that within these limitations Liszt has
crowded the utmost possible to the human hand.

His great resources still remain speed and noise. He can do no more
than electrify or stupefy. It must not be forgotten that in these
limitations lies the glory of his music, its quality that is heroic
because it wins its battles in the world of men and women. It is
superb in its physical accomplishment. It shows the mighty Hercules
in a struggle with no ordinary serpent, but with the hundred-headed
Hydra. Yet if he will electrify he must do so with speed that is
reckless, and if he will overpower with noise he must be brutal.
Hence the great sameness in his material, trills, arpeggios, scales,
and chromatic scales, which are no more than these trills, arpeggios,
scales, etc., even if they be filled up with all the notes the hand can
grasp. Hence also the passages of rapidly repeated chords in places
where he wishes to be imposing to the uttermost.

It would be an interesting experiment to take from Liszt’s pianoforte

music all these numerous effects and put them together in a volume;
then to classify them, and, having mastered three or four of the
formulas, to try to find any further difficulties. It is doubtful if, having
so mastered the few types, one would need to make great effort to
play the whole volume from cover to cover. And these effects
constitute the great substance of Liszt’s music. He fills piece after
piece with solid blocks of them. The page on which they are printed
terrifies the eye, yet they demand of the player only speed and
strength. Inasmuch as these may be presupposed in a theoretical
technique, the music is, theoretically, not technically difficult. The
higher difficulties of pianoforte playing are not to be met in music that
conforms to technical types, but in music the notes of which appear
in ever changing combinations and yet are of separate and individual
importance. Such music presents a new difficulty almost in every
measure. In playing it the mind must control each finger in its every
move, and may not attend in general but must attend in particular.
The player who can play the twelve études of Liszt will find the Well-
tempered Clavichord and the Preludes of Chopin more difficult to
play. In the tours de force of Liszt his technique is of itself effective;
in the music of Bach or Chopin it must be effectual. Having a
colossal technique he can play Liszt, but he must ever practise Bach
and Chopin.

IV
Liszt wrote a vast amount of music for the pianoforte. There is not
space to discuss it in detail, and, in view of the nature of it and the
great sameness of his procedures, such a discussion is not
profitable. For a study of its general characteristics it may be
conveniently and properly divided into three groups. These are made
up respectively of transcriptions, of a sort of realistic music heavily
overlaid with titles, and of a small amount of music which we may
call absolute, including a sonata and two concertos.

The transcriptions are well-nigh innumerable. Some he seems to

have made with the idea of introducing great orchestral
masterpieces into the family circle by means of the pianoforte. So we
may consider the transcriptions, or rather the reductions of the nine
symphonies of Beethoven, of the septet by the same composer, and
of the Symphonie Fantastique and the ‘Harold in Italy’ of Berlioz. He
has succeeded in making these works playable by ten fingers; but he
did not pretend to make them pianoforte music. He had an
astonishing skill in reading from full score at sight, and in these
reductions he put this skill at the service of the public.

In rearranging smaller works for the piano, such as songs of

Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Franz, he worked
far more for the pianist. He saw clearly the great problem which such
a rearrangement involved, that qualities in the human voice for which
these songs were conceived were wholly lacking in the pianoforte,
and that he must make up for this lack by an infusion of new material
which brought out qualities peculiar to the instrument. In so far as
possible he took the clue to these infusions from the accompaniment
to the songs he worked on. In some songs the accompaniment was
the most characteristic feature, or the most predominant element.
There his task was light. The transcription of the Erl King, for
example, meant hardly more than a division of the accompaniment
as Schubert wrote it between the two hands in such a way that the
right would be able to add the melody. There is practically nothing of
Liszt in the result. Schubert’s accompaniment was a pianoforte piece
in itself. Again, the accompaniment of ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark’ was
originally highly pianistic. But here the piano could sing but a dry
imitation of the melody; and Liszt therefore enriched the
accompaniment, preserving always its characteristic motive, but
expanding its range and adding little runs here and there, which by
awakening the harmonious sonority of the piano concealed its lack of
expressive power in singing melody. The result was a masterpiece of
pianoforte style in which the melody and graceful spirit of the song
were held fast.

Those songs the accompaniments of which were effective on the

pianoforte seemed to blossom again under his hand into a new
freshness. His skill was delicate and sure. Even in the case where
the accompaniment was without distinction he was often able so to
add arabesques in pianoforte style as to make the transcription
wholly pleasing to the ear. The arrangement of Chopin’s song, ‘The
Maiden’s Wish,’ offers an excellent example. Here, having little but a
charming melody and varied harmonies to work on, he made a little
piece of the whole by adding variations in piquant style. But often
where he had no accompaniment to suggest ideas to him, he was
either unsuccessful, as in the transcription of Wolfram’s air from
Tannhäuser, or overshot the mark in adding pianistic figuration, as in
that of Mendelssohn’s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges. He touched the
Schumann and Franz songs, too, only to mar their beauty.

It may be that these transcriptions served a good end by making at

least the names and the melodies of a number of immortal songs
familiar to the public, but there can be no doubt that these
masterpieces have proved more acceptable in their original form.
Most of Liszt’s transcriptions have fallen from the public stage.
Amateurs who have the skill to play them have the knowledge that,
for all their cleverness, they are not the songs themselves. And
those which have been kept alive owe their present state of being to
the favor of the pianist, who conceives them to be only pieces for his
own instrument.

The number of Liszt’s transcriptions in the style of fantasias is very

great. Like his predecessors and his contemporaries he made use of
any and every tune, and the airs or scenes from most of the favorite
operas. There are fantasias on ‘God Save the King’ and Le Carnaval
de Venise, on Rigoletto, Trovatore, and Don Giovanni. The name of
the rest is legion. The frequency with which a few of them are still
heard, would seem to prove that they at least have some virtue
above those compositions of Herz and Thalberg in a similar vein; but
most of them are essentially neither a better nor a worthier addition
to the literature of the instrument and have been discarded from it.
Those who admire Liszt unqualifiedly have said of these fantasias
that they are great in having reproduced the spirit of the original
works on which they were founded, that Liszt not only took a certain
melody upon which to work, but that he so worked upon it as to
intensify the original meaning which it took from its setting in the
opera. The Don Giovanni fantasia is considered a masterpiece in
thus expanding and intensifying at once.

But what, after all, is this long fantasia but a show piece of the
showiest and the emptiest kind? How is it more respectable than
Thalberg’s fantasia on themes from ‘Moses,’ except that it contains
fifty times as many notes and is perhaps fifty times louder and
faster? It is a grand, a superb tour de force; but the pianist who plays
it—and he must wield the power of the elements—reveals only what
he can do, and what Liszt could do. It can be only sensational. There
is no true fineness in it. It is massive, almost orchestral. The only
originality there is in it is in making a cyclone roar from the strings, or
thunder rumble in the distance and crash overhead. On the whole
the meretricious fantasia on Rigoletto is more admirable, because it
is more naïve and less pretentious.

This Reminiscenses de Don Juan par Franz Liszt, dedicated to his

Majesty Christian Frederick VIII of Denmark with respectueux et
reconnaissant hommage, begins with a long and stormy introduction,
the predominant characteristic of which is the chromatic scale. This
one finds blowing a hurricane; and there are tremolos like thunder
and sharp accents like lightning. The storm, however, having
accomplished its purpose of awe, is allowed to die away, and in its
calm wake comes the duet La ci darem la mano, which, if it needed
more beauty than that which Mozart gave it, may here claim that of
being excellently scored for the keyboard. Liszt has interpolated long
passages of pianistic fiorituri between the sections of it, at which one
cannot but smile. Then follow two variations of these themes, amid
which there is a sort of cadenza loosing the furious winds again, and
at the end of which there is a veritable typhoon of chromatic scales,
here divided between the two hands in octaves, there in thirds for the
right hand. The variations are rich in sound, but commonplace in
texture. Finally there is a Presto, which may be taken as a coda,
founded upon Don Giovanni’s air, Finch’ han dal vino, an exuberant
drinking song. The scoring of this is so lacking in ingenuity as well as
in any imposing feature as to be something of an anti-climax. It trips
along in an almost trivial manner, with a lot of tum-tum and a lot of
speed. Toward the end there is many a word of hair-raising import:
sotto voce, martellato, rinforzando, velocissimo precipitato,
appassionato energico, arcatissimo, strepitoso, and a few others, all
within the space of little over three pages. There is also another blast
or two of wind. In the very last measures there is nothing left but to
pound out heavy, full chords with a last exertion of a battle-scarred
but victorious gladiator. And in spite of all this the last section of the
work is wanting in weight to balance the whole, and it seems like a
skeleton of virtuosity with all its flesh gone. It must be granted that
the recurrence of the opening motives at moments in the middle of
the fray, and at the end, gives a theoretical unity of structure which
similar fantasias by Herz and Thalberg did not have; but on the
whole it might well be dispensed with from the work, which, in spite
of such a sop to the dogs of form, remains nothing but a pot-pourri
from a favorite opera.

This huge transcription, as well as the delicate arrangements of

songs, the transcriptions of the overtures to ‘William Tell’ and
Tannhäuser, and of Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’
music, as well as the elaborations of Schubert’s Waltzes and other
short pieces may, if you will, be taken as an instance of a
professional courtesy or public benefaction on the part of Liszt; but
they stand out none the less most conspicuously as virtuoso music.
What Liszt really did in them was to exploit the piano. They effect but
one purpose: that of showing what the piano can do. At the present
day, when the possibilities of the instrument are commonly better
known, they are a sort of punching bag for the pianist. Surely no one
hears a pianist play Liszt’s arrangement of the overture to
Tannhäuser with any sense of gratitude for a concert presentation of
Wagner’s music. Nor does one feel that the winds and thunders in
the Don Giovanni fantasia may cause Mozart to turn in his grave with
gratitude. One sees the pianist gather his forces, figuratively hitch up
his sleeves, and if one is not wholly weary of admiring the prowess
of man, one wets one’s lips and attends with bated breath.
Something is to be butchered to make a holiday in many ways quite
Roman.

V
The second group of music to be observed consists of original
pieces of a more or less realistic type. Nearly all have titles. There
are Impressions et Poésies, Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes,
Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, Apparitions, Consolations,
Légendes and Années de pèlerinage. There are even portraits in
music of the national heroes of Hungary. In the case of some the title
is an after-thought. It indicates not what suggested the music but
what the music suggested. There are two charming studies, for
example, called Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen, which are
pure music of captivating character. They are no more program
music than Schumann’s ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ nor do they suffer in the
slightest from the limitations which a certain sort of program is held
to impose upon music. First of all one notices an admirable
treatment of the instrument. There is no forcing, no reckless speed
nor brutal pounding. Then the quality of the music is fresh and
pleasing, quite spontaneous; and both are delightful in detail.

Others are decidedly more realistic than most good music for the
pianoforte which had been written up to that time. Take, for example,
the two Legends, ‘The Sermon of the Birds to St. Francis of Assisi,’
and ‘St. Francis of Paule Walking on the Waves.’ These are picture
music. In the one there is the constant twitter and flight of birds, in
the other the surging of waters. Both are highly acceptable to the
ear, but perhaps more as sound than as music. They depend upon
effects, and the effects are those of imitation and representation. The
pieces lose half their charm if one does not know what they are
about.

There seems to be no end of the discussion which has raged over

the relative merits of so-called program music and absolute music. It
has little relation to the beauty of sound in both kinds; else the
triumphant beauty of much program music would have long since put
an end to it. The Liszt Legends are as delightful to the ear as any
other of his pieces which have no relation to external things. What
we have to observe is that they deal with effects, that is with masses
of sound—trills, scales and other cumulative figures; that, finely as
these may be wrought, they have no beauty of detail nor any
detailed significance. Here is no trace of that art of music which
Chopin practised, an art of weaving many strands of sound in such a
way that every minute twist of them had a special beauty, a music in
which every note had an individual and a relative significance. The
texture of the ‘Legends’ is perhaps brilliantly colored, but it is solid or
even coarse in substance, relatively unvaried, and only generally
significant. But it serves its purpose admirably.

In the Années de pèlerinage one finds a great deal of Liszt in a nut-

shell. The three years of wandering through Switzerland and Italy
netted twenty-three relatively short pieces, to which were later added
three more, of Venetian and Neapolitan coloring, a gondoliera, a
canzona, and a tarantella. All these pieces bear titles which are of
greater or lesser importance to the music itself. It must be admitted
that only a title may explain such poor music as Orage, Vallée
d’Obermann and Marche funèbre (in memory of Emperor Maximilian
of Mexico). These pieces are inexcusable bombast. The Vallée
d’Obermann, which may claim to be the most respectable of them, is
not only dank, saturated with sentimentality, but lacks spontaneous
harmony and melody, and toward the end becomes a mountain of
commonplace noise to which one can find a parallel only in such
songs as ‘Palm Branches’ (Les Rameaux). The ‘Chapel of William
Tell,’ the ‘Fantasia written after a reading of Dante,’ the three pieces
which claim a relation to three sonnets of Petrarch, and the two Aux
cyprès de la villa d’Este, are hardly better. There is an Éclogue, a
piece on homesickness, one on the Bells of Geneva, an ‘Angelus’
and a Sursum Corda as well. Three, however, that deal with water in
which there is no trace of tears—Au lac du Wallenstedt, Au bord
d’une source, and Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este—are wholly
pleasing and even delightful pianoforte music. Especially the second
of these is a valuable addition to the literature of the instrument. The
suggested melody is spontaneous, the harmonies richly though not
subtly colored, the scoring exquisite.

Yet, though in looking over the Années de pèlerinage one may find
but a very few pieces of genuine worth, though most are pretentious,
there is in all a certain sort of fire which one cannot approach without
being warmed. It is the glorious spirit of Byron in music. There is the
facility of Byron, the posturing of Byron, the oratory of Byron; but
there is his superb self-confidence too, showing him tricking himself
as well as the public, yet at times a hero, and Byron’s unquenchable
enthusiasm and irrepressible passionateness.

Finally we come to the small group of big pieces in which we find the
sonata in B minor, the two concertos, several études, polonaises and
concert pieces. Among the études, the great twelve have been
already touched upon. Besides these the two best known are those
in D-flat major and in F minor. The former is wholly satisfactory. The
latter is at once more difficult and less spontaneous. The two
polonaises, one in C minor and one in E major, have the virtues
which belong to concert pieces in the style of Weber’s Polacca, the
chief of which is enormous brilliance. In addition to this that in C
minor is not lacking in a certain nobility; but that in E major is all of
outward show.

The two concertos are perfect works of their kind, unexcelled in

brilliancy of treatment of both the orchestra and the piano, and that in
E-flat major full of musical beauty. Both are free in form and
rhapsodical in character, effusions of music at once passionate and
poetical. That in A major loses by somewhat too free a looseness of
form. Even after careful study it cannot but seem rambling.

The sonata in B minor is perhaps Liszt’s boldest experiment in

original music for the pianoforte alone. One says experiment quite
intentionally, because the work shows as a whole more ingenuity
than inspiration, is rather an invention than a creation. There are
measures of great beauty, pages of factitious development. At times
one finds a nobility of utterance, at others a paucity of ideas.

As to the themes, most of them are cleverly devised from three

motives, given in the introduction. One of these is a heavy,
descending scale (lento assai); another a sort of volplane of
declamatory octaves which plunge downward the distance of a
diminished seventh, rise a third, and down a minor seventh again
through a triplet; the third a sort of drum figure (forte marcato). The
initial statement of these motives is impressive; but it is followed by a
sort of uninteresting music building which is, unhappily, to be found
in great quantity throughout the whole piece. This is no more than a
meaningless repetition of a short phrase or figure, on successive
degrees of the scale or on successive notes of harmonic importance.
Here in the introduction, for example, is a figure which consists of a
chord of the diminished seventh on an off beat of the measure,
followed by the downward arpeggio of a triad. This figure is repeated
five times without any change but one of pitch; and it is so short and
the repetitions so palpable that one feels something of the irritation
stirred by the reiterated boasting of the man who is always about to
do something.

The long work spins itself out page after page with the motives of the
introduction in various forms and this sort of sparring for time. There
is no division into separate movements, yet there are clear sections.
These may be briefly touched upon. Immediately after the
introduction there is a fine-sounding phrase in which one notices the
volplane motive (right hand) and the drum motive (left hand). It is
only two measures long, yet is at once repeated three times, once in
B minor, twice in E minor. Then follow measures of the most trite
music building. The phrases are short and without the slightest
distinction, and the ceaseless repetition is continued so inexorably
that one may almost hear in the music a desperate asthmatic
struggle for breath. One is relieved of it after two or three pages by a
page of the falling scale motive under repeated octaves and chords.

There is next a new theme, which seems to be handled like the

second theme in the classical sonata form, but leads into a long
section of recitative character, in which the second and third motives
carry the music along to a singing theme, literally an augmentation of
the drum motive. This is later hung with garlands of the ready-made
variety, and then gives way to a treatment of the volplane motive in
another passage of short breathing. The succeeding pages continue
with this motive, brilliantly but by no means unusually varied, and
there is a sort of stamping towards a climax, beginning incalzando.
But this growth of noise is coarse-grained, even though the admirer
may rightly say that it springs from one of the chief motives of the
piece. It leads to a passage made up of the pompous second theme
and a deal of recitative; but after this there comes a section in F-
sharp major of very great beauty, and the quasi adagio is hauntingly
tender and intimate. These two pages in the midst of all the noise
and so much that must be judged commonplace will surely seem to
many the only ones worthy of a great creative musician.

After them comes more grandiose material, with that pounding of

chords for noise one remembers at the end of Thalberg’s fantasia on
‘Moses,’ then a sort of dying away of the music which again has
beauty. A double fugue brings us back to a sort of restatement of the
first sections after the introduction, with a great deal of repetition,
scantness of breath, pompousness, and brilliant scoring. Just before
the end there is another mention of the lovely measures in F-sharp
major. There is a short epilogue, built on the three motives of the
introduction.

This sonata is a big work. It is broadly planned, sonorous and heavy.

It has the fire of Byron, too, and there is something indisputably
imposing about it. But like a big sailing vessel with little cargo it
carries a heavy ballast; and though this ballast is necessary to the
balance and safety of the ship, it is without intrinsic value.

In view of Liszt’s great personal influence, of his service rendered to

the public both as player and conductor, of his vast musical
knowledge, his enthusiasms and his prodigious skill with the
keyboard, one must respect his compositions, especially those for
the pianoforte with which we have been dealing. Therefore, though
when measured by the standards of Bach, Mozart and Chopin they
cannot but fall grievously short, one must admit that such a standard
is only one of many, and furthermore that perhaps Liszt’s music may
have itself set a new standard. Certainly in many ways it is
superlative. It is in part the loudest and the fastest music that has
been written for the piano, and as such stands as an achievement in
virtuosity which was not before, and has not since been, paralleled.
Also it is in part the most fiery and the most overpowering of
pianoforte music. It is the most sensational, as well, with all the
virtues that sensationalism may hold.

These are, indeed, its proved greatness, and chief of them is a direct
and forceful appeal to the general public. It needs no training of the
ear to enjoy or to appreciate Liszt’s music. Merely to hear it is to
undergo its forceful attraction. Back of it there stands Liszt, the
pianist and the virtuoso, asserting his power in the world of men and
women. However much or little he may be an artist, he is ever the
hero of pianoforte music. So it seems fitting to regard him last as
composer of nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, veritably epics in
music from the life of a fiery, impetuous people. Rhythms, melodies,
and even harmonies are the growth of the soil of Hungary. They
belonged to the peasant before Liszt took them and made them
thunderous by his own power. What he added to them, like what he
added to airs from favorite operas, may well seem of stuff as
elemental as the old folk-songs themselves: torrents and hurricanes
of sound, phenomena of noise. The results are stupendous, and in a
way majestic.
As far as pianoforte music is concerned Liszt revealed a new power
of sound in the instrument by means of the free movement of the
arms, and created and exhausted effects due to the utmost possible
speed. These are the chief contributions of his many compositions to
the literature of the piano. His music is more distinguished by them
than by any other qualities. In melody he is inventive rather than
inspired. His rhythms lack subtlety and variety. Of this there can be
no better proof than the endless short-windedness already observed
in the sonata in B minor, which is to be observed, moreover, in the
Symphonic Poems for orchestra. As a harmonist he lacks not so
much originality as spontaneity. He is oftener bold than convincing.
One finds on nearly every page signs of the experimentalist of heroic
calibre. He is the inventor rather than the prophet, the man of action
rather than the inspired rhapsodist. He is a converter into music
oftener than a creator of music.

Hence we find him translating caprices of Paganini into caprices for

the pianoforte; and when by so doing he has, so to speak, enlarged
his vocabulary enormously, he gives us, in the Douze Études, a sort
of translation of the pianoforte itself into a cycle of actions. Again he
translates a great part of the literature of his day into terms of music:
Consolations, Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, Légendes,
Eclogues and other things. Even Dante and Petrarch are so
converted, not to mention Sénancourt, Lamartine, Victor Hugo,
Byron, and Lenau, with other contemporaries. The Chapel of William
Tell, the Lake of Wallenstadt, the cypresses and fountains at the Villa
d’Este, even the very Alps themselves pass through his mind and
out his fingers. In this process details are necessarily obscured if not
obliterated, and the result is a sort of general reproduction in sound
that is not characterized by the detailed specialities of the art of
music, that is, of the art of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin. And even of
Schumann, it may be added, for Schumann’s music runs
independently beside poetry, not with it, so closely associated, as
Liszt’s runs.

The question arises as to how this generalization of music will

appear to the world fifty years hence. Is Liszt a radical or a
reactionary, after all? Did he open a new life to music, a further
development of the pianoforte, or did he, having mastered utterly all
the technical difficulties of the pianoforte, throw music back a stage?
Internally his music has far less independent and highly organized
life than Chopin’s. But by being less delicate is it perhaps more
robust, more procreative? At present such hardly seems to be the
case. A great part of the pianoforte music of Liszt is sinking out of
sight in company with that of Herz and Thalberg—evidently for the
same reason; namely, that it is sensationalist music. Its relations to
poetry, romanticism, nature or landscape will not preserve it in the
favor of a public whose ear little by little prefers rather to listen than
to be overpowered. Yet, be his music what it may, he himself will
always remain one of the great, outstanding figures in the history of
music, the revealer of great treasures long ignored. Whatever the
value of his compositions, he himself, the greatest of all pianoforte
virtuosi, set the standard of the new virtuosity which, thanks to his
abiding example, becomes less and less a skill of display, more and
more an art of revelation.
 FOOTNOTES:
[37] W. von Lenz: ‘The Great Piano Virtuosos of Our Time.’ Translated from the
German by Madeline R. Baker, New York, 1899.