This is one of the religious texts of lean manufacturing, and I’m a nut for lean production methodology. As you can tell from my reviews of The Goal and The Phoenix Project, I think knowledge workers in general and designers in particular can learn a lot from lean.
In recent years, lean manufacturing has gotten a lot of criticism. Rightly so: the reduction of buffers between supply and demand meant that sudden, extreme changes to either can have catastrophic ripple effects. But at its heart lean still represents a way to reduce waste, reduce cost, and put the right goods in the hands of the right consumer. Whatever comes next for lean production, I guarantee the contents of this book will be at its foundation.