Lean Distribution: Applying Lean Manufacturing to Distribution, Logistics, and Supply Chain

I'm sure that Kirk Zylstra has plenty of insights to share, but unfortunately not with the readers of this book. Some truly awful writing obscures his message and, after half an hour of chopping through the unstructured, jargon-ridden prose; lucky-dip punctuation, and lazy word choice I was sufficiently irritated to write this review. Some examples from page 89 (which is as far as I got before I started to lose it, but you could drop the book and find examples on any upturned page): "The demand pattern for a specific business may or may not be contiguous; this depends as much on relative volume as any other factor: low sales items would statistically have a more disjoint pattern". Is this a sentence? How about some full stops? What is that colon adding? The biggest predictor of demand contiguity is the length of the unit of time: demand measured in months is more likely to be contiguous than demand measured in seconds. What does "statistically" mean? Low sales items have a more disjoint[ed] pattern; or even we expect that Low sales items have a more disjoint[ed] pattern. "And cost of capital may be an established financial principle, but when applied to the trade-off of inventory for an individual stock keeping unit (SKU), it may be a stretch". I think this means that we shouldn't use the cost of capital to make decisions about replenishment quantities, but I'm guessing. Why use "may" twice? Is the statement conditional? If so, on what? Have Wiley stopped editing their technical authors? I wonder if this is one of those books that you're supposed to display on your office bookshelf, like badges on a boy scout's sleeve? I certainly regret buying it.

Está bien el libro, pero quiza le faltan "ejemplos y ejercicios concretos que ayuden a entender la puesta en práctica de los conceptos expuestos. El libro se queda en un aspecto general bastante introductorio.

As an experienced manufacturing and distribution consultant I was very disappointed with this book. The first half of the book goes on and on about how current distribution inputs are "bad", specifically forecasts and says the lean distribution will help solve all your problems (my exaggeration). Unfortunately, like many lean writers, the author really doesn't give you many fresh ideas or detail, other than "lean is good". His answer to most demand uncertainty is to drop forecasting and go to period review (hardly new for the readers of Plossl and Wight), except if you have long lead time items...like anyone that sources overseas. Cutting lead times, using MAD for safety stock are other "relevations", again hardly new to anyone that has read and understood Plossl and Wight. To be fair, this would be a good primer for someone with little distribution experience. However, if you have a reasonable amount of experience in distribution and/or inventory planning, you may not find anything new here.

save your time and money and avoid this waste of words and print....why you might ask? There is nothing lean or TPS about the garbage in this book. Its another poorly written group of ideals and opinions expressed in order to piggyback off of the whole "Lean Frenzy" and make money off of it. Maybe Amazon should start exposing reviewers that get paid for positive responses to allow people to see what motivates so many sterling, five star reviews of trash. Stay away from this book....