What is Lean Thinking?

Lean Thinking Origins
By Eirian Lewis, TEAL Consulting Ltd

The ideas behind what is now termed Lean Thinking can be linked to several sources, including management thinkers such as W. Edwards Deming. Of particular note are the ideas originally developed in Toyota’s post Second World War manufacturing operations – known as the Toyota Production System – under the guidance of its chief engineer, Taiichi Ohno. 

The term ‘lean’ was popularised in the seminal book ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ (Womack, Jones and Roos, 1990), which clearly illustrated – for the first time – the significant performance gap between the Japanese and western automotive industries. It described the key elements accounting for this superior performance as Lean production – ‘lean’ because Japanese business methods used less of everything – human effort, capital investment, facilities, inventories and time - in manufacturing, product development, parts supply and customer relations.

“All we are doing is looking at a time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value added waste.”

Taiichi Ohno, 

Toyota Production System 1978