• ERP: Enterprise-wide Respect for People: If you believe ERP is only good for supporting your processes, think again. Daryl Powell and Pauline Found discuss how ERP systems can support the “respect for people” principle within the Toyota Production System.
• Making IT work: Cimlogic’s Chris Borrowdale talks about the conflicting needs of a lean manager, IT manager and operator in a MES implementation scenario.
• The most rewarding transformation: We always think about what lean can do for our companies, often forgetting how much it improves the lives of our people. Kelly J Sullivan, from the University of Wisconsin-Stout, in the USA, discusses the topic looking back at one of the most rewarding lean transformations he took part in.
• Thinking people: a platform for change: People are the single most important factor to Toyota’s success. Throughout the organisation, and around the world, the Japanese company has made people development its main focus. LMJ meets Toyota Material Handling UK and speaks to a senior manager and two team leaders within the organisation.
• The last straw: Traditional management seems to be oblivious of the role that a faulty system has in causing a company trouble, and blames the employees instead. So, is it the people or is it the sytem? wonders Bill Bellows

SECTOR FOCUS: PUBLISHING

• Pressing on with lean: Claire O’Brien discusses the adoption of lean thinking in the ever-changing publishing industry, and Graeme Blackler shares Elsevier’s story.

• This new section of the journal includes LMJ’s new topic-specific columns. Tech for lean will look at the relationship between lean thinking and technological advances and IT (this month SCHAD’s Oliver Sturrock talks about the rise of BYOD, Bring Your Own Device), while Learning to lean will follow LMJ’s publisher SayOne Media’s effort to lean out, as its staff works to obtain an accreditation.