The Lean Dairy Farm : Eliminate Waste, Save Time, Cut Costs - Creating a More Productive, Profitable and Higher Quality Farm

'For those farmers who value their team, respect their cows and are focused on leading a sustainable farming business, adopting a Lean way of thinking will be a breakthrough. Reading The Lean Dairy Farm may be your best investment ever.' --Juliet Maclean, farmer and co-founder, OnSide and Synlait

'One of the most valuable books I've read. As a farmer, Lean has helped me to combat my two biggest challenges: Time and Cost.' --Andrew Meuli, farmer

Make your farm better, smarter, and more productive

The Lean method is revolutionising farming globally with its proven approach for reducing waste, improving productivity and sustaining profits. In The Lean Dairy Farm, dairy farmer and Lean consultant Jana Hocken explains why this approach is essential to every dairy farm. Using her own family's farm as a case study, she introduces practical tools that every farmer can apply and shows you how to create a farm culture that supports Lean thinking.

Even if Lean is entirely new to you, this book offers a simple blueprint for applying its principles and practices to improve your farm. You'll learn how to: quickly make use of basic Lean concepts on your farm identify and eliminate waste in farm processes organise your farm effectively to improve productivity standardise your processes to do everything right the first time develop an engaged, high performing team.

If you want a more efficient, profitable and robust dairy farm, The Lean Dairy Farm is for you.
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Acknowledgements ix


Introduction xi


Part I The concept of 'Lean' 1


1 Before we get started ... 3


2 What is 'Lean'? 9


3 Applying Lean to dairy farming 31


Part II 10 Lean tools that will transform your farm 43


4 The 8 wastes on the farm 45


5 5S workplace organisation 91


6 Visual management 141


7 Standard work 187


8 Value stream mapping 231


9 Practical problem solving 261


10 Built-in quality 289


11 Total productive maintenance 309


12 Creating flow on the farm 339


13 Visual planning 355


Part III The culture of a Lean Farm 371


14 Creating the right culture 373


15 People behaviours 379


16 Lean leadership 385


About the authors 397


Index 399
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JANA HOCKEN is a veteran Lean business consultant with a background in Toyota, who has assisted hundreds of companies across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, America and Europe. She has been a speaker at numerous events and in 2017 developed the successful LeanFarm training program specifically for farmers.
MAT HOCKEN is a 4th generation farmer and 2017 Nuffield scholar. As well as embracing Lean on the farm, Mat aims to inspire farmer-led innovation, through projects such as The Rural Innovation Lab and FarmCave.
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