ABSTRACT
Toyota describes its systems as “just-in-time” and the “Toyota Production System”; it was Womack et al. (1990), in trying to sum up how the Toyota Production System differed from conventional mass production, who coined the term “Lean Thinking.” The “Lean” in Lean Thinking was intended to contrast the processes developed by Toyota with the “Mass” of mass production. Presumably, the “Thinking” in Lean Thinking referred to the driving force behind the development of the Toyota Production System, Taiichi Ohno (1998, 57), who said, “… I want to emphasise the importance of thoroughly understanding production and manpower reduction…. ‘Understanding’ is my favorite word … it [is] to approach an objective positively to comprehend its nature.”
