ABSTRACT
As described in Chapter 11 on process re-design, Womack, Jones and Roos first introduced the concept of Lean Manufacturing in 1990 by describing an approach to quality and operational management that had been adopted by the Japanese car industry, led primarily by Toyota. They were in fact describing an approach that, although inspired by Henry Ford’s production line at the River Rouge Model-T Ford assembly plant, had evolved continuously from the 1950s through into the 1980s but that had been consolidated at Toyota into an organized ‘system,’ the so-called Toyota Production System or TPS. The pioneers who laid the foundations for this were Taiichi Ohno, who became Executive Vice President in 1975 and his consultant and advisor Dr Shigeo Shingo. Whereas Ohno’s career remained with Toyota, Shingo went on to successfully introduce these concepts to many other industries, not only in Japan but also in the US and in Europe.
