ABSTRACT
Peter Drucker called the automotive industry “the
industry of the industries” in 1946. Indeed, a great
number of new production and management phi-
losophies first emerged in the automotive industry
and then they diffused into other industries. Lean
production is one of those philosophies. Lean pro-
duction philosophy was first introduced by Toyota
Motor Company. Briefly, lean production aims
at the ideal of 100% value-added work with zero
or minimum waste (Womack et al. 1990, Koskela
1992, Koskela 1997). The automotive industry is
now using half the manufacturing space, half the
human effort in factory, half the product devel-
opment time, and half the investments in tools
because of the successful implementation of lean
production concepts (Womack et al. 1990). After
Toyota Motor Company’s great triumph, lean
production principles were then rapidly employed
by other automotive companies as well as other
industrial sectors (Gann 1996).
