What do you think?
Rate this book
Andy & Me: Crisis & Transformation on the Lean Journey
Second Edition of a Shingo Prize Winner
Based on the author's personal experience with Toyota’s master teachers and with companies in the midst of great change, Andy & Me: Crisis & Transformation on the Lean Journey, now in its second edition, is a business novel set in a failing New Jersey auto plant focusing on the tribulations of Tom Pappas, the plant manager. The situations, characters, and plant politics will ring true with many readers.
In a cool, readable style, this highly popular work follows Tom's relationship with Andy Saito, a reclusive retired Toyota guru whom Tom persuades to help save his plant through the teaching of the legendary Toyota Production System (TPS).
On this journey, the reader learns that TPS is more than just a collection of tools; it entails a new way of thinking and behaving. Though Tom finds success — both in his plant and in his personal life — he learns from Andy that successful improvement is endless and eternal.This edition includes study questions after each chapter to support your learning and help you tell some of your own stories.
Pascal Dennis discusses the 2nd edition of his Shingo Prize-winning book Andy & Me.
- GenresBusinessNonfiction
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 12, 2015
6 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 27, 2023
Good intro to many lean concepts and tools.
The adventures... well, not too adventurous.
The adventures... well, not too adventurous.
March 25, 2020
This book definitely had its share of pros and cons for me.
Pros first: Implementing Lean in a healthcare environment has some quite unique challenges, and Dennis does a good job of identifying the kinds of challenges that do come up. There were many times when I was reading when I thought, wow, this is exactly the sort of thing I've encountered at the hospital where I work! The Lean principles introduced and the tools are also generally sound and useful.
However, there are also some cons with this book. First, keeping track of the characters is easier in War & Peace than in this book. I literally had to stop partway through the book and start a list of all the characters to figure out who was talking to whom in terms of roles. Worse, at least two of the characters inadvertently change names partway through the book (which I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for my little cheat-sheet), and at least one more name changes spelling - which adds to the overall confusion created by the large cast of characters.
Second, I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction, so I'm totally up for both a good story and educational material. However, in this story, I found essentially all the characters irritating, and the situations very contrived. Tom, the main character leading the implementation of Lean at the fictitious Grandview Hospital, uses a mixture of pontificating and socratic questioning, which resulted (for me anyway) in a condescending or patronizing tone throughout the book. All the characters seem to be essentially caricatures of the stereotypes that are represented; there is no sense of the subtleties and complexities of good story characters (or real people, for that matter).
Finally, I'm a visual person, so I was happy to see that there are diagrams here and there throughout the book. Some are good, some are repeated twice or more in different places (which I guess is OK), and some made me wonder, ???? is this?? For example, on p. 211 (Fig. 19.2), there is a diagram of what is supposed to be the four steps of practical problem solving. However, looking at this thing, one would be hard-pressed to identify anything resembling four steps, and if multiple people tried to figure out 4 steps from the diagram, I'm pretty sure the results would be different for every person. The text is only slightly more helpful, since the 4 steps are actually hierarchies of questions, not steps with any label per se.
Ultimately, if you are trying to implement Lean in a healthcare setting, this book is worth reading but I wouldn't a) read this first or b) only read this. Instead, if you're new to this topic, I would recommend starting with a general book on Lean or Lean Six Sigma (e.g., What is Lean Six Sigma? - but there are many other good intro books out there). From there, I would continue with a learning about the issues that cause failures in healthcare, especially Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. Then I think you'd be OK to read this Andy & Me and the Hospital book.
Pros first: Implementing Lean in a healthcare environment has some quite unique challenges, and Dennis does a good job of identifying the kinds of challenges that do come up. There were many times when I was reading when I thought, wow, this is exactly the sort of thing I've encountered at the hospital where I work! The Lean principles introduced and the tools are also generally sound and useful.
However, there are also some cons with this book. First, keeping track of the characters is easier in War & Peace than in this book. I literally had to stop partway through the book and start a list of all the characters to figure out who was talking to whom in terms of roles. Worse, at least two of the characters inadvertently change names partway through the book (which I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for my little cheat-sheet), and at least one more name changes spelling - which adds to the overall confusion created by the large cast of characters.
Second, I read a lot of fiction and non-fiction, so I'm totally up for both a good story and educational material. However, in this story, I found essentially all the characters irritating, and the situations very contrived. Tom, the main character leading the implementation of Lean at the fictitious Grandview Hospital, uses a mixture of pontificating and socratic questioning, which resulted (for me anyway) in a condescending or patronizing tone throughout the book. All the characters seem to be essentially caricatures of the stereotypes that are represented; there is no sense of the subtleties and complexities of good story characters (or real people, for that matter).
Finally, I'm a visual person, so I was happy to see that there are diagrams here and there throughout the book. Some are good, some are repeated twice or more in different places (which I guess is OK), and some made me wonder, ???? is this?? For example, on p. 211 (Fig. 19.2), there is a diagram of what is supposed to be the four steps of practical problem solving. However, looking at this thing, one would be hard-pressed to identify anything resembling four steps, and if multiple people tried to figure out 4 steps from the diagram, I'm pretty sure the results would be different for every person. The text is only slightly more helpful, since the 4 steps are actually hierarchies of questions, not steps with any label per se.
Ultimately, if you are trying to implement Lean in a healthcare setting, this book is worth reading but I wouldn't a) read this first or b) only read this. Instead, if you're new to this topic, I would recommend starting with a general book on Lean or Lean Six Sigma (e.g., What is Lean Six Sigma? - but there are many other good intro books out there). From there, I would continue with a learning about the issues that cause failures in healthcare, especially Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. Then I think you'd be OK to read this Andy & Me and the Hospital book.
March 17, 2025
Two decades ago I read the original Andy and Me as the first "lean book" I had ever read. Although it was before I began keeping reflections on books, I remember that it was one of those books that helped shape the trajectory of my career. Now, nearly 20 years later, I find myself listening to Andy and Me And the Hospital and having deep emotional and personal connections with the story.
In June of 2023, I had my first ever major medical issue, a stroke. The first 3 days in the Emergency Room and Intensive Care Unit are still very foggy. On day 4, the first day I remember, my wife informed me of all the problems that had occurred in the previous 3 days.
- First I lay undiagnosed in the ER for almost 12 hours, until they finally got me a CAT scan and found I had a clogged artery.
- It was another 12 hours before I was moved from the ER into the ICU. This wasn't because they didn't have the beds, they didn't have the staff.
- It was 3 days before they would get me an MRI.
- The hospital did not have a neurologist on staff, so my test results were all sent to another hospital to be evaluated. No neurologist came to see me or to talk with me about my condition.
As rough as all of this was on me, it was even more rough on my wife and family. I remember finally coming around and my wife, in complete tears, telling me "The hospital is broken". She also said, "You have 20 years working in continuous Improvement that you need to come and fix it".
We look back now and laugh, sort of, but the stories in Andy and Me and the Hospital are very real. I have friends who are doctors and nurses, and I know the reason they got into the medical field was to help people. The lessons in this book are certainly abridged, if the author had gone into detail about how to improve the healthcare system, I'm sure this book could have rivaled Tolstoy's War and Peace in length.
Andy & Me and the Hospital is an emotionally charged book that demonstrates why we need to incorporate process Improvement into our healthcare systems.
In June of 2023, I had my first ever major medical issue, a stroke. The first 3 days in the Emergency Room and Intensive Care Unit are still very foggy. On day 4, the first day I remember, my wife informed me of all the problems that had occurred in the previous 3 days.
- First I lay undiagnosed in the ER for almost 12 hours, until they finally got me a CAT scan and found I had a clogged artery.
- It was another 12 hours before I was moved from the ER into the ICU. This wasn't because they didn't have the beds, they didn't have the staff.
- It was 3 days before they would get me an MRI.
- The hospital did not have a neurologist on staff, so my test results were all sent to another hospital to be evaluated. No neurologist came to see me or to talk with me about my condition.
As rough as all of this was on me, it was even more rough on my wife and family. I remember finally coming around and my wife, in complete tears, telling me "The hospital is broken". She also said, "You have 20 years working in continuous Improvement that you need to come and fix it".
We look back now and laugh, sort of, but the stories in Andy and Me and the Hospital are very real. I have friends who are doctors and nurses, and I know the reason they got into the medical field was to help people. The lessons in this book are certainly abridged, if the author had gone into detail about how to improve the healthcare system, I'm sure this book could have rivaled Tolstoy's War and Peace in length.
Andy & Me and the Hospital is an emotionally charged book that demonstrates why we need to incorporate process Improvement into our healthcare systems.
November 13, 2018
Great summary of lean for healthcare. It's a fable--with a solid story, actually. That makes it easy to read and remember, but puts limits on the detail that you can include in the book. So, if you're trying to learn lean for the first time, not ideal. But if you're a lean practitioner this is a great reminder with some nice applications to healthcare in particular.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews