Three Perspectives on Lean
In 1990 Jones, Womack and colleagues had published ‘The Machine That Changed the World’ as a description of the Toyota Production Systems, and coined the term Lean. The book itself was an offshoot of their research project, funded by the Western automobile manufacturers, to define World Class in automotive manufacture.
The answer, Toyota’s system, did not surprise anyone in the industry, and what the research failed to adequately address was not what Lean was, but how to implement it.
View full press release