What is Lean?

Lean comes from Toyota's production in Japan

Lean started back in the 1950s at Toyota in Japan. Toyota was in a tough competition with the major American Car Manufacturers. Toyota was struggle ring due to bad economy following the war. Therefore Toyota could not afford the huge inventories like the American companies could. Hence opposite the Americans Toyota could not run a production based on huge batches (mass production). Toyota therefore invented a production system with low inventories. They called this system "Toyota Production System” or TPS.

As a part of TPS Toyota implemented Just-in-Time or JIT. JIT was mainly used towards the suppliers who were asked to deliver in small batches, in superb quality and at the right time. Always! This forced the suppliers to move closer to the Toyota factories. Actually Ford was the first to use JIT already in the 1920s. Ford called their system “dock to factory floor”.

Among other tools in TPS you will find SMED (reduction of changeover time), Kanban stock control, 5S system and order, poka-yoke (zero failure) and Kaizen (continuous improvements).

Soon Toyota showed good results and in the 1980s the American companies has to acknowledge that Toyota was doing something right.

“Toyota Production System” becomes “Lean”

It was Womack and Jones who named the TPS system as "Lean" with their book "Lean Thinking" from 1996. The word was chosen because it means less. Less inventory, less (and better utilized) capacity, less failures, shorter lead time etc.

In the book Womack and Jones defined Lean in 5 basic principles:
1. Define the value demanded by the customer.
2. Define the value stream that creates the value.
3. Create flow in the value stream.
4. Create pull (based on orders).
5. Continuous improvements.
Read more about the 5 principles >

From production to other areas
Since then Lean has become a widely used tool to optimized value streams and processes. Today Lean is used to optimize production and manufacturing areas, administrative processes (service), product development, IT-software etc. The reason for this is that the 5 basic principles are universal and can be used in any environment.

By Mikkel Smith
Flexkom - download Lean tools and software online >
Scandinavian website with Lean Courses (sorry - in Danish) >