Lean production is the economics-of-production concept John Krafcik named in his 1988 MIT Sloan Management Review article Triumph of the Lean Production System, drawn from his MIT thesis research comparing automobile assembly plants worldwide, including his own experience as a quality engineer at NUMMI, the Toyota-General Motors joint venture in Fremont, California. Krafcik used lean to describe plants that achieved high productivity and quality with markedly less of everything Toyota's system treated as waste: inventory, buffer stock, indirect labor and job classifications, in contrast with the buffered mass-production model scientific management and Fordism had generalized earlier in the century. The concept entered mainstream economic and management theory after Krafcik's MIT colleagues James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos popularized it worldwide in their 1990 book The Machine That Changed the World, and it went on to reshape operations-management theory and industrial-economics accounts of how firms compete on production-system design rather than scale alone.
Facts
FieldOperations management and industrial economics 1 Proposed ByThe term was coined by John Krafcik in his 1988 article Triumph of the Lean Production System, describing a manufacturing system built earlier at Toyota. 2 SignificancePlants that adopt lean production consistently show higher productivity and quality than comparable non-lean plants, which is what drove the concept's spread into mainstream operations-management and industrial-economics theory after Krafcik's MIT colleagues popularized it worldwide. 2 Connections
Influenced By
Shigeo Shingo, a founding figure of the Toyota Production System underlying Lean Production, cites reading Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management in 1931 as the start of his life's work in the field; Taylor's own efficiency documentation was also applied by Henry Ford in the early 1900s, the other direct forerunner line into lean.
Source Wikipedia
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Also in Technology and Engineering Atlas: the same subject.
Source The Evolution of Lean Production: 25 Years After John Krafcik Coined the Term (Lean Blog)
Originated In
Also in Technology and Engineering Atlas: where this subject originated.
Source Krafcik, J.F. (1988) Triumph of the Lean Production System, Sloan Management Review 30: 41-52John F. Krafcik
Sources
1. The Evolution of Lean Production: 25 Years After John Krafcik Coined the Term (Lean Blog)
2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationLean manufacturing, History section
John Krafcik coined the term Lean in his 1988 article, 'Triumph of the Lean Production System'.
Lean manufacturing, Benefits section
Lean manufacturing plants have higher levels of productivity and quality than non-Lean plants.
Wikipedia, Lean manufacturing, Coining the term section
John Krafcik coined the term Lean in his 1988 article, "Triumph of the Lean Production System".
View the Source Krafcik, J.F. (1988) Triumph of the Lean Production System, Sloan Management Review 30: 41-52
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