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3.4 Life long learning

You will need to continue to learn for as long as you live.

I will have more to say about life long learning in Chapter 8. Here I emphasize the need to read books as one way to engage in life long learning. Why read books?

• By reading biographies of successful people, you can learn how they achieved what they did.
• Business classics, like My Years with General Motors (1964), by Alfred P. Sloan, still have a lot to teach us.
• New books about business often repackage ideas from industrial engineering as new fads. We need to retain our solid IE skills while keeping up with the new packaging and new phrases.
• Books on new ideas and research in science and engineering can help us, Some believe that biology (for example, new research on the human genome) will be the wave of the future. As IEs we may become involved in production systems that involve some of these new products and services so we should stay up-to-date.

The following list gives examples of books, recent and old, that support your IE education.

• Barry, Robert, Nan: A Six Sigma Mystery. ASQ Quality Press, 2003.
• Bossidy, Larry, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Crown Publishing Group, 2002.
• Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World. Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress. Viking Penguin, 2003.
• Chiles, James R. Inviting Disaster. Lessons from the Edge of Technology. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2002.
• Collins, Jim. Good to Great. HarperBusiness, 2001.
• Covey, Stephen. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2004.
• Covey, Stephen. The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. The Free Press, 2004.
• Crosby, Philip B. Completeness: Quality for the 21st Century. Penguin Group, 1992.
• Crosby, Philip B. Quality is Free. The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1979.
• Crosby, Philip B. Quality without Tears. The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1984.
• The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. The Art of Happiness at Work. Penguin Group, 2003.
• Delderfield, R.F. God is an Englishman. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 1970. This novel, based in England in the 1850s and 1860s, describes how a businessman succeeds while treating workers well. The book is long, but fun to read.
• Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting Rich in America. Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 2001.
• Feigenbaum, Armand V. Total Quality Control. Third edition. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991.
• George, Michael L. Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed. The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2002.
• Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes. Originally published in 1948 and 1952, these two books tell the true story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who used efficiency methods on their 12 children, and helped develop many of the ideas of IE.
• Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox. The Goal. North River Press, second edition, 1992.
• Goldratt, Eliyahu M. Critical Chain. North River Press Publishing Corporation, 1996.
• Gourdin, Kent N. Global Logistics Management. Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
• Guaspari, John. Switched-On Quality. Paton Press, 2002.
• Hammer, Michael, and James Champy. Reengineering the Corporation. HarperBusiness, 1993.
• Halberstam, David. The Reckoning. William Morrow and Company, 1986.
• Harrington, H. James. Business Process Improvement. The Breakthrough Strategy for Total Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness. McGraw-Hall, Inc., 1991.
• Harry, Mikel, and Richard Schroder. Six Sigma. Doubleday, 2000.
• Henderson, Bruce A, Jorge L. Larco, Stephen H. Martin. Lean Transformation: How to Change Your Business into a Lean Enterprise. 1999.
• Hirano, Hiroyuki. 5S for Operators: 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace. Productivity Press Inc., 1996.
• Jones, Daniel, James Womack. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. Productivity Press Inc., 2003.
• Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Confidence. Crown Business, 2004. “Why certain people and corporations achieve high performance levels.” (New York Times)
• Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass, 2002. “A fable that illustrates how teamwork can be restored to even the most troubled and entrenched workplace.” (New York Times)
• Levering, Robert. A Great Place to Work.
• Ono, Taiichi. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Engineering & Management Proess, 1998.
• Pande, Peter S., Robert P. Neuman, Roland R. Cavanagh. The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance. The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2000.
• Peterson, Donald E., and John Hillkirk. A Better Idea. Redefining the Way Americans Work. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
• Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Bantam New Age, 1991.
• Rifkin, Jeremy. The End of Work. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.
• Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society. Pine Forge Press, 2000.
• Robitaille, Denise. Root Cause Analysis. Paton Press, 2004.
• Rosenbluth, Hal F., and Diane McFerrin Peters. The Customer Comes Second. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2002.
• Rother, Mike, and John Shoo. Learning to See. Lean Enterprises Institute, Inc., 1999. Flow of material and information through entire production system.
• Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back. Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
• Togawa, Bunji, and Norman Bodek. The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen. PCS Press, 2001.
• Turkel, Studs. Working. New Press, 1997.
• Uchitelle, Louis. Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences. Knopf Publishing Group, 2006.
• Underhill, Paco. Why We Buy. The Science of Shopping. Touchstone Books, 2000.
• Ventrice, Cindy. Make Their Day. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2003.
• Von Drehle, David. Triangle. Grove, 2003. “A chronicle of the Dickensian workplace -- the Triangle shirtwaist factory in Greenwich Village -- that burned down in 1911, and which led to a massive strike and unlikely financial coalitions.” (New York Times)
• Walton, Mary. The Deming Management Method. Perigree Books, 1986.
• Warshofsky, Fred. The Chip War. The Battle for the World of Tomorrow. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989.
• Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon. Henry Ford and the American Century. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
• Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking. Simon & Schuster, 1996.