Bob Emiliani

Bob Emiliani
Five Questions
Biography

"My leadership training will be the best you've ever had - insightful, surprisingly simple, practical, and highly effective."

M.L. "Bob" Emiliani, Ph.D.

Bob is President of The CLBM, LLC. Since 1995 has focused his efforts on de-mystifying Lean leadership. In addition to Lean leadership training, Bob is a sought-after speaker at corporate meetings and senior management retreats.

Bob has 20 years of experience in aerospace, consumer products, and service industries, and has had front-line responsibility for implementing Lean principles and practices in three different settings: manufacturing shop floor, supply networks, and higher education (academics, not administration).

Bob Emiliani is perhaps the most prolific author of books and papers on Lean management. While his books have focused principally on Lean leadership, his papers also cover diverse topics related to Lean management such as supply chain management, Lean in higher education, and the history of Lean management. All publications are practical, based on nearly two decades of industrial and hand-on Lean management experience. Click here to see a partial list of books and papers.

Bob has written five ground-breaking papers that describe practical and innovative approaches to identifying leadership problems and improving leadership capabilities. Five of his papers have won awards for excellence.

He coined the terms Lean Behaviors and Behavioral Waste in his breakthrough paper titled "Lean Behaviors," published in 1998. This paper was the first detailed description of how the "respect for people" principle functions in enabling continuous improvement, and how behavioral waste severely undercuts efforts to achieve a Lean transformation. Bob also coined the terms Real Lean, Fake Lean, and The Toyota Half-Way, the latter two terms describing Lean transformations that ignore the "Respect for People" principle. Recently, he coined the term Manufacturing is Patriotic.

Bob is the principal author of Better Thinking, Better Results, a detailed case study and analysis of The Wiremold Company's Lean transformation over a 10 year period (1991-2001). The book won a Shingo Prize in 2003 as the first book to describe the enterprise-wide Lean transformation of a real company and where both principles of Lean management - "Continuous Improvement" and "Respect for People" - were applied. He is also the author of several other books.

Bob earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Miami, M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and Ph.D. in Engineering from Brown University ('88).

Five Questions from Kevin Meyer of EvolvingExcellence.com

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

My name is Bob Emiliani. I am the owner of a business established in 1998 to teach executives Lean management and how to lead a Lean business. The scope of activity is limited to training, which I always personally deliver, and I write and publish books about Lean management focused on leadership and the history of Lean. I’ve authored or co-authored seven books and over 30 papers. I am also a professor at Central Connecticut State University where I head up the Technology Management Master’s degree program and teach courses on leadership, supply chain management, and a unique course in which we formally analyze failures in leadership and decision-making using a modified A3 report format. There is no other course like it anywhere.

Currently I am continuing my research into the life and work of Frank G. Woollard, the forgotten pioneer of flow production, whose 1954 book I re-published in January 2009. I am uncovering amazing new details about his work, some of which will appear in future articles.

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

I started by reading Masaaki Imai’s book Kaizen around 1992 when I was in engineering working on new product development. I found the book in the corporate library and thought it was interesting. Then in 1994 I became a business unit manager in manufacturing and was trained in Lean by Shingijutsu consultants. It was that experience established my passion for Lean. I left the corporate world after 12 years to teach and continue developing my research on Lean leadership. Nobody was studying Lean leadership at the time because Lean tools were consuming academics’ and practitioners’ interests – and still do, unfortunately. While there has been greater interest in leadership in the last few years, the concepts and methods that trainers use today are more than a decade behind me.

My focus since the mid-1990s has been exclusively on Lean leadership. Certain unanswered questions fueled my passion for Lean. For example, I wanted to understand why top leaders and their organizations have such limited success with Lean management and why Lean usually goes away when there is a change in leadership or ownership of a company. My studies have yielded several unique contributions, much of which is reflected in my books. My leadership training course is unlike any other in its scope of fresh ideas and new Lean concepts and practices, all of which have been validated in the real world.

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

By building on the work of others and adding their own important ideas and inventions, Toyota created a beautiful management system, one which is conceptually simple but very challenging to understand deeply and practice correctly. The reason is because there are so many subtle nuances and interconnections between Lean principles, practices, tools, and methods. These contribute greatly to making Lean work, but which few very people truly understand. That includes leading training organizations whose approach to Lean is tool-based (e.g. value stream maps, A3 reports, policy deployment, etc.), and leading companies whose executives understand Lean as nothing more than a set of tools for the manager’s tool kit. That, unfortunately, is how Lean-Sigma and other unnecessary and confusing variants of Lean management were created.

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

People do not understand that Lean management must be practiced in a non-zero-sum manner; that the intent of Lean is to improve competitiveness and grow a business without marginalizing the interests of key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Marginalizing their interests undercuts teamwork which severely limits what can be achieved. Lean is not a cost-cutting program or tool to lay people off; that was never its intent, but that is how 99% of senior managers understand and practice Lean. This misunderstanding is pervasive throughout the history of progressive management since the 1880s, driven by executives’ unrelenting desire for quick gains in profitability in classic zero-sum style – certainly at the expense of employees, and usually suppliers and others as well. For this and other reasons, Lean management is very difficult to establish let alone sustain.

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

In the history of progressive management, of which Lean is the current best example, executives have almost always focused on continuous improvement – the tools – and ignored the “Respect for People” principle (or its equivalent in earlier times). Ignoring the “Respect for People” principle comes at a great cost because people (the stakeholders) will he hurt by Lean instead of benefitting from Lean. Executives who forgo the wonderful opportunity to learn how “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People” are interrelated can access no more than 20% of the benefits of Lean management. They leave the other 80% behind, and also create a lot of inconsistency and confusion that is difficult to overcome.

The opportunity is clearly to learn Lean as it was intended: a non-zero-sum principle-based management system. How can that be accomplished? Through hard work, of course. Committed executives will study Lean management, participate in kaizen, and apply Lean principles and practices in the execution of their own daily activities. The secret formula for learning any craft, and Lean management is indeed a craft, is to engage the hands and mind.

We need many more examples of Lean done right, and a whole lot fewer examples of Lean done wrong. That is where I can be a big help.

Bob Emiliani M.L. “Bob” Emiliani (b. 2 June 1958) is a university professor, researcher, author, historian of progressive management, and executive trainer. He has over 20 years of experience in aerospace, consumer products, and service industries, and has had front-line responsibility for implementing Lean principles and practices in the manufacturing shop floor, supply networks, and in higher education (academics). Bob is a leading figure in the Lean movement and is dedicated to helping people correctly understand and implement Lean management.

Born in Miami, Florida, his father Cesare was an internationally recognized geologist and micropaleontologist and his mother Rosita was a homemaker. He has an older sister, Sandra. Bob graduated from Coral Gables High School and went on to the University of Miami (Coral Gables, Fla.) where he received a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He then earned an M.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI) and a Ph.D. from Brown University (Providence, RI). Bob married Lucinda Bronico in 1985 and they have two children, Michael and Julia.

Bob’s many interests over the years have led to diverse professional capabilities and personal interests, including: engineer, manager, artist, author, publisher, musician (bass guitar), photographer, craftsman (bicycle frame builder), scholar, and educator.

Career Summary
Bob began working part-time at the age of 13 as a salesperson at Camera Corner South in Coconut Grove, Fla. Subsequent to that, he worked as a laboratory technician and as a freelance writer for Bicycling, Bike Tech, and Bicycle Guide Magazines producing articles on various metallurgical aspects of custom bicycle frames and components. While pursuing his Ph.D., Bob worked at Monet Jewelers (Pawtucket, RI) as a metallurgist in manufacturing operations.

Upon completing his Ph.D., Bob worked at Pratt & Whitney in Florida and Connecticut and held positions of increasing responsibility in engineering, manufacturing operations, and supply chain management, and organizational learning. His first exposure to Lean management was in July 1994 as a business unit manager in operations, and he later worked to establish Lean in the supply base of the commodity he managed. He was trained in Lean by Shingijutsu Co., Ltd. consultants.

Bob left industry in 1999 to join academia as a clinical professor in the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Hartford, Conn. branch). There he taught graduate courses on Lean leadership, supply chain management, and failure analysis of management decisions. Since 2005, Bob has been at Central Connecticut State University where he teaches various undergraduate and graduate courses and has an active research program in Lean management.

Bob has pioneered the application of Lean principles and practices to the design and delivery of his courses. He was also the first professor to facilitate kaizens in higher education to improve a 10-course executive M.S. degree program.

Bob is one of the most prolific authors on Lean leadership and Lean management, having written eight books and 17 peer-reviewed papers. He has also written 16 peer-reviewed papers on Lean supply chain management and e-business, 10 peer-reviewed papers in materials science and engineering, and numerous non-refereed technical reports and magazine articles. Several of these works have won awards for excellence.

Bob’s extensive body of work on Lean management led him to develop a unique short course in Lean leadership for executives that highlight the “Respect for People” principle which is invariably missing in other training courses yet is critical to Lean management success . He is a is a frequent speaker at corporate meetings and senior management retreats due to his pioneering work in Lean leadership and his deep understanding of the history of progressive management and the “Respect for People” principle.

Significant Contributions
Bob’s work in Lean management is informed by his extensive hands-on application of Lean management principles and practices when he worked in the aerospace industry.

Bob’s research on Lean leadership began in the mid-1990s and was prescient, for it is only since late 2007 that the broader Lean community has begun to recognize the importance of leadership. He chose to study the least-understood aspect of Lean management – leadership – because it contributes greatly to the difficulty that managers have in correctly understanding and practicing Lean management. Bob’s knowledge of the history of progressive management dating from the late 1800s contextualizes today’s leadership challenge in ways that are not recognized or understood by others.

Bob was the first researcher to provide a detailed description of how the “Respect for People” principle functions in enabling continuous improvement, and how wasteful leadership behaviors severely undercut efforts to achieve a Lean transformation. He has written several innovative papers that describe practical approaches to identifying leadership problems in organizations that seek to practice Lean management. His books and papers provide readers with direct and effective routes for improving their Lean leadership capabilities and are fully consistent with Lean principles and practices.

Bob’s supply chain management research agenda (discontinued in 2007) focused principally on the topic of e-business, specifically electronic reverse auctions used by corporations to purchase goods and services. He is the leading author in this field having written 12 peer-reviewed papers, and has gained international recognition for his work debunking claims of effectiveness and cost savings. His decade-long research program showed that the benefits of reverse auctions are greatly overstated, which has helped corporations avoid making errors that can cause long-term damage to buyer-seller relationships and result in higher costs.

Bob’s is a highly cited researcher for his early 1990s work in debond coatings for ceramic matrix composites.

External Links




	Bob Emiliani Five Questions Biography "My leadership training will be the best you've ever had - insightful, surprisingly simple, practical, and highly effective." M.L. "Bob" Emiliani, Ph.D. Bob is President of The CLBM, LLC. Since 1995 has focused his efforts on de-mystifying Lean leadership. In addition to Lean leadership training, Bob is a sought-after speaker at corporate meetings and senior management retreats. Bob has 20 years of experience in aerospace, consumer products, and service industries, and has had front-line responsibility for implementing Lean principles and practices in three different settings: manufacturing shop floor, supply networks, and higher education (academics, not administration). Bob Emiliani is perhaps the most prolific author of books and papers on Lean management. While his books have focused principally on Lean leadership, his papers also cover diverse topics related to Lean management such as supply chain management, Lean in higher education, and the history of Lean management. All publications are practical, based on nearly two decades of industrial and hand-on Lean management experience. Click here to see a partial list of books and papers. Bob has written five ground-breaking papers that describe practical and innovative approaches to identifying leadership problems and improving leadership capabilities. Five of his papers have won awards for excellence. He coined the terms Lean Behaviors and Behavioral Waste in his breakthrough paper titled "Lean Behaviors," published in 1998. This paper was the first detailed description of how the "respect for people" principle functions in enabling continuous improvement, and how behavioral waste severely undercuts efforts to achieve a Lean transformation. Bob also coined the terms Real Lean, Fake Lean, and The Toyota Half-Way, the latter two terms describing Lean transformations that ignore the "Respect for People" principle. Recently, he coined the term Manufacturing is Patriotic. Bob is the principal author of Better Thinking, Better Results, a detailed case study and analysis of The Wiremold Company's Lean transformation over a 10 year period (1991-2001). The book won a Shingo Prize in 2003 as the first book to describe the enterprise-wide Lean transformation of a real company and where both principles of Lean management - "Continuous Improvement" and "Respect for People" - were applied. He is also the author of several other books. Bob earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Miami, M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and Ph.D. in Engineering from Brown University ('88). Five Questions from Kevin Meyer of EvolvingExcellence.com 1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities? My name is Bob Emiliani. I am the owner of a business established in 1998 to teach executives Lean management and how to lead a Lean business. The scope of activity is limited to training, which I always personally deliver, and I write and publish books about Lean management focused on leadership and the history of Lean. I’ve authored or co-authored seven books and over 30 papers. I am also a professor at Central Connecticut State University where I head up the Technology Management Master’s degree program and teach courses on leadership, supply chain management, and a unique course in which we formally analyze failures in leadership and decision-making using a modified A3 report format. There is no other course like it anywhere. Currently I am continuing my research into the life and work of Frank G. Woollard, the forgotten pioneer of flow production, whose 1954 book I re-published in January 2009. I am uncovering amazing new details about his work, some of which will appear in future articles. 2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion? I started by reading Masaaki Imai’s book Kaizen around 1992 when I was in engineering working on new product development. I found the book in the corporate library and thought it was interesting. Then in 1994 I became a business unit manager in manufacturing and was trained in Lean by Shingijutsu consultants. It was that experience established my passion for Lean. I left the corporate world after 12 years to teach and continue developing my research on Lean leadership. Nobody was studying Lean leadership at the time because Lean tools were consuming academics’ and practitioners’ interests – and still do, unfortunately. While there has been greater interest in leadership in the last few years, the concepts and methods that trainers use today are more than a decade behind me. My focus since the mid-1990s has been exclusively on Lean leadership. Certain unanswered questions fueled my passion for Lean. For example, I wanted to understand why top leaders and their organizations have such limited success with Lean management and why Lean usually goes away when there is a change in leadership or ownership of a company. My studies have yielded several unique contributions, much of which is reflected in my books. My leadership training course is unlike any other in its scope of fresh ideas and new Lean concepts and practices, all of which have been validated in the real world. 3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean? By building on the work of others and adding their own important ideas and inventions, Toyota created a beautiful management system, one which is conceptually simple but very challenging to understand deeply and practice correctly. The reason is because there are so many subtle nuances and interconnections between Lean principles, practices, tools, and methods. These contribute greatly to making Lean work, but which few very people truly understand. That includes leading training organizations whose approach to Lean is tool-based (e.g. value stream maps, A3 reports, policy deployment, etc.), and leading companies whose executives understand Lean as nothing more than a set of tools for the manager’s tool kit. That, unfortunately, is how Lean-Sigma and other unnecessary and confusing variants of Lean management were created. 4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean? People do not understand that Lean management must be practiced in a non-zero-sum manner; that the intent of Lean is to improve competitiveness and grow a business without marginalizing the interests of key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Marginalizing their interests undercuts teamwork which severely limits what can be achieved. Lean is not a cost-cutting program or tool to lay people off; that was never its intent, but that is how 99% of senior managers understand and practice Lean. This misunderstanding is pervasive throughout the history of progressive management since the 1880s, driven by executives’ unrelenting desire for quick gains in profitability in classic zero-sum style – certainly at the expense of employees, and usually suppliers and others as well. For this and other reasons, Lean management is very difficult to establish let alone sustain. 5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished? In the history of progressive management, of which Lean is the current best example, executives have almost always focused on continuous improvement – the tools – and ignored the “Respect for People” principle (or its equivalent in earlier times). Ignoring the “Respect for People” principle comes at a great cost because people (the stakeholders) will he hurt by Lean instead of benefitting from Lean. Executives who forgo the wonderful opportunity to learn how “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People” are interrelated can access no more than 20% of the benefits of Lean management. They leave the other 80% behind, and also create a lot of inconsistency and confusion that is difficult to overcome. The opportunity is clearly to learn Lean as it was intended: a non-zero-sum principle-based management system. How can that be accomplished? Through hard work, of course. Committed executives will study Lean management, participate in kaizen, and apply Lean principles and practices in the execution of their own daily activities. The secret formula for learning any craft, and Lean management is indeed a craft, is to engage the hands and mind. We need many more examples of Lean done right, and a whole lot fewer examples of Lean done wrong. That is where I can be a big help. M.L. “Bob” Emiliani (b. 2 June 1958) is a university professor, researcher, author, historian of progressive management, and executive trainer. He has over 20 years of experience in aerospace, consumer products, and service industries, and has had front-line responsibility for implementing Lean principles and practices in the manufacturing shop floor, supply networks, and in higher education (academics). Bob is a leading figure in the Lean movement and is dedicated to helping people correctly understand and implement Lean management. Born in Miami, Florida, his father Cesare was an internationally recognized geologist and micropaleontologist and his mother Rosita was a homemaker. He has an older sister, Sandra. Bob graduated from Coral Gables High School and went on to the University of Miami (Coral Gables, Fla.) where he received a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He then earned an M.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI) and a Ph.D. from Brown University (Providence, RI). Bob married Lucinda Bronico in 1985 and they have two children, Michael and Julia. Bob’s many interests over the years have led to diverse professional capabilities and personal interests, including: engineer, manager, artist, author, publisher, musician (bass guitar), photographer, craftsman (bicycle frame builder), scholar, and educator. Career Summary Bob began working part-time at the age of 13 as a salesperson at Camera Corner South in Coconut Grove, Fla. Subsequent to that, he worked as a laboratory technician and as a freelance writer for Bicycling, Bike Tech, and Bicycle Guide Magazines producing articles on various metallurgical aspects of custom bicycle frames and components. While pursuing his Ph.D., Bob worked at Monet Jewelers (Pawtucket, RI) as a metallurgist in manufacturing operations. Upon completing his Ph.D., Bob worked at Pratt & Whitney in Florida and Connecticut and held positions of increasing responsibility in engineering, manufacturing operations, and supply chain management, and organizational learning. His first exposure to Lean management was in July 1994 as a business unit manager in operations, and he later worked to establish Lean in the supply base of the commodity he managed. He was trained in Lean by Shingijutsu Co., Ltd. consultants. Bob left industry in 1999 to join academia as a clinical professor in the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Hartford, Conn. branch). There he taught graduate courses on Lean leadership, supply chain management, and failure analysis of management decisions. Since 2005, Bob has been at Central Connecticut State University where he teaches various undergraduate and graduate courses and has an active research program in Lean management. Bob has pioneered the application of Lean principles and practices to the design and delivery of his courses. He was also the first professor to facilitate kaizens in higher education to improve a 10-course executive M.S. degree program. Bob is one of the most prolific authors on Lean leadership and Lean management, having written eight books and 17 peer-reviewed papers. He has also written 16 peer-reviewed papers on Lean supply chain management and e-business, 10 peer-reviewed papers in materials science and engineering, and numerous non-refereed technical reports and magazine articles. Several of these works have won awards for excellence. Bob’s extensive body of work on Lean management led him to develop a unique short course in Lean leadership for executives that highlight the “Respect for People” principle which is invariably missing in other training courses yet is critical to Lean management success . He is a is a frequent speaker at corporate meetings and senior management retreats due to his pioneering work in Lean leadership and his deep understanding of the history of progressive management and the “Respect for People” principle. Significant Contributions Bob’s work in Lean management is informed by his extensive hands-on application of Lean management principles and practices when he worked in the aerospace industry. Bob’s research on Lean leadership began in the mid-1990s and was prescient, for it is only since late 2007 that the broader Lean community has begun to recognize the importance of leadership. He chose to study the least-understood aspect of Lean management – leadership – because it contributes greatly to the difficulty that managers have in correctly understanding and practicing Lean management. Bob’s knowledge of the history of progressive management dating from the late 1800s contextualizes today’s leadership challenge in ways that are not recognized or understood by others. Bob was the first researcher to provide a detailed description of how the “Respect for People” principle functions in enabling continuous improvement, and how wasteful leadership behaviors severely undercut efforts to achieve a Lean transformation. He has written several innovative papers that describe practical approaches to identifying leadership problems in organizations that seek to practice Lean management. His books and papers provide readers with direct and effective routes for improving their Lean leadership capabilities and are fully consistent with Lean principles and practices. Bob’s supply chain management research agenda (discontinued in 2007) focused principally on the topic of e-business, specifically electronic reverse auctions used by corporations to purchase goods and services. He is the leading author in this field having written 12 peer-reviewed papers, and has gained international recognition for his work debunking claims of effectiveness and cost savings. His decade-long research program showed that the benefits of reverse auctions are greatly overstated, which has helped corporations avoid making errors that can cause long-term damage to buyer-seller relationships and result in higher costs. Bob’s is a highly cited researcher for his early 1990s work in debond coatings for ceramic matrix composites. External Links Bob Emiliani’s books on Amazon Prof. Bob Emiliani, Central Connecticut State University Cesare Emiliani
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