Lean Production

The original form of the lean revolution in production systems, developed in the 1940s at Toyota’s factory in Japan, under the direction of Taiichi Ohno. It maintained low backup stocks of parts and finished goods, and that forced the whole productive process to develop rapid reactions and to achieve very low rates of error. This in turn meant that workers had responsibility for taking timely decisions in response to local circumstances, forestalling errors rather than waiting for them to happen.

Since then, lean production has evolved into the more broadly-based system of management called lean thinking, the guiding principle of Lean Logic. It is important, however, to note two qualifications to this.

First, Lean Logic’s application of lean thinking to the question of how to survive the closing down of the market economy is a considerable stretch from the original vision, and sometimes the strain shows (as discussed in Lean Thinking). The use of the concept in Lean Logic may stray from the lean thinking which industrial practitioners and teachers of lean thinking would recognise.^L178

Secondly, the application of lean production in industry varies from place to place, and some are far from being a model for our future society. For example, lean production’s precision and synchronised timing has in some places been coupled with ruthless treatment of the participating workers. The value of lean production and the lean thinking that came out of it is to be found in its insights, and not always in its commercial practice.^L179