ABSTRACT
Developing countries perform much of the world’s industrial manufacturing, and that which remains in the developed world is highly automated. Given that the nature of business has changed so much in the world’s developed economies since the late 1800s, and increasing digitization only appears to be accelerating the cycle of “creative destruction” in current moment, it is perplexing that most companies today persist with a traditional, industrial model of management that was developed in an era when companies mass-produced physical goods in labor-intensive factories. Lean offers people a proven alternative to the legacy industrial, mass production management model, and allows employees to get lots more done in their day while working at a healthy pace. Back in the 1950s, amidst the bleak economy of post-war Japan, Toyota could not compete with the Big Three on the same playing field—they simply didn’t have the money or space—so they created their own distinct industrial production and management system.
