Stephan Höfer

Waiting is difficult for me, my own mistakes annoy me, and obvious waste is hard for me to bear. So it's no wonder that I've been working in the field of Lean Enterprise Management for more than 30 years now: First as an employee, project manager and department manager of an American company and for 25 years as a professor at Reutlingen University in Germany.

At the ESB Business School, I educate our students in the optimisation of production and business processes. In parallel, since more than 20 years, I train lean experts in the application of lean tools, especially the use of a self developed moderation tool that makes it possible to visualize value streams in production and administration in the shortest possible time, to quantify waste and to develop feasible target value streams together with process participants and owners.

I have also been certifying lean experts for more than 10 years now as part of the Lean Enterprise Management Institute of the Knowledge Foundation at Reutlingen University. Furthermore, I train executives how to introduce a lean culture in all areas of a company, especially in the indirect areas. And there, but not only there, the topic of meeting culture and efficiency is right at the top of the agenda.

I hope reading this book will be as inspiring for you as it was for us writing it.