ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the 19th century, Frederick Winslow Taylor investigated workplace efficiencies. His ideas included dividing work and specifying tasks to be performed, training workers so they could perform these tasks, and installing supervisors to ensure that tasks were performed as specified. Henry Ford used these ideas, introducing interchangeable parts with standardized work and moving conveyance to create what he called flow production. As the people at Toyota looked at this situation in the 1930’s, and more intensely after World War II, it occurred to them that a series of innovations might make it more possible to provide both continuity in process flow and a wide variety in product offerings. W. Edwards Deming is regarded as having provided the basis for Lean through the introduction of the Plan–Do–Check–Act (PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.
