Curious Cat Management Improvement Library - Dictionary: lean manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS)

Lean Thinking - the continual effort to increase productivity and eliminate waste.

"Lean" Production was the term chosen by Womack to label the concepts of Toyota's production system ["we were beginning to understand our subject but didn't have a label for the concept. We thought about Toyota-ism (after the car company) or Toyoda-ism after Kiichiro Toyoda, the company president who had many of the ideas for pull systems in the 1930s, or Ohno-ism after Taiichi Ohno" - from Lean Thinking: A Look Back And A Look Forward by Jim Womack].

Related Terms:

• 5s
• A3 Report
• Genchi Genbutsu
• Jidoka
• Just in Time Inventory
• Kanban
• Mistake Proofing
• Takt Time

Online Resources:

• Lean Thinking: A Look Back And A Look Forward by Jim Womack.
• Lean thinking posts and Toyota Production System(TPS) posts from the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.
• Find lean thinking blogs in the Curious Cat Management Blog Directory
• Using Integrated Management Systems to Design a Lean Factory Using Integrated Management Systems to Design a Lean Factory by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Oct 1998. An excellent article from the CQM Journal in which the author explores how to design in lean manufacturing when setting up a production system.
• Toyota Production System by Mikio Kitano, May 1997. Paper by Mikio Kitano, President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America, Inc. to accompany presentation at the Lean Manufacturing Conference at the University of Kentucky.

Books:

• Lean Thinking Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones (Contributor), 1996, 2003.
• The Machine That Changed the World The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones (Contributor) and Daniel Roos (Contributor), 1991. Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's five year study on the future of the worldwide auto industry.