ABSTRACT
Very few people are performing their work efficiently. The exceptions to this are the workers for companies that really understand and have adopted the Toyota Production System (TPS). The Toyota Manufacturing plant, the Daiwa House, Isuzu Steel, and Mifune in Japan are great examples of TPS, or Lean manufacturing. The workers at these plants move with the choreographed precision of a NASCAR pit crew. The difference is that a pit crew works with choreographed precision for 15 seconds, while the workers in these Japanese plants do it for an entire shift. The American manufacturing community is at least 50 years behind NASCAR and INDY racing teams. There is an “all-American” process in which multiple tasks are quickly and efficiently performed that many changeover practitioners cite as an example of what can be accomplished when the principles of Lean are applied.
