ABSTRACT
It is 25 years since The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al., 1990) first described an
alternative logic for running a business and showed how Toyota was doing this. While many
people look to the chapters on lean production and the coordination of the supply chain, there
were equally important sections that covered the development of new products and how the
automakers dealt with customers and managed their dealers. It was this last subject area that led
to our research into applying lean to the areas of sales and service.
