{"id":12303,"date":"2013-11-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lei.flywheelsites.com\/the-lean-post\/articles\/lean-production-turns-25\/"},"modified":"2013-11-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T05:00:00","slug":"lean-production-turns-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lean.org\/the-lean-post\/articles\/lean-production-turns-25\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLean Production\u201d Turns 25"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cLean Production\u201d Turns 25 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Reflecting on the 25th<\/sup> anniversary of the term \u201clean production\u201d being coined, Jim Womack, founder of the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute, sees the lean movement\u2019s initial emphasis on kaizen events and tools giving way to a focus on strategy deployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I find exciting about what\u2019s going on now,\u201d said Womack, who just published an expanded second edition to his most recent book Gemba Walks<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThere are a lot of people who have really gotten serious in recent times about rigorous strategy deployment.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s significant because strategy deployment \u201chas to start at the top about what the purpose of the organization is and then it\u2019s cascaded down throughout the organization.\u201d Strategy deployment, sometimes called policy deployment or hoshin kanri<\/em> in Japanese, aligns an organization\u2019s functions and activities vertically and horizontally with its strategic objectives.<\/p>\n

Womack, commenting on the Michigan Business Network\u2019s The Leaning Edge program<\/a>, also discussed the evolution of lean thinking and practice. And he proposed a way to revive the abandoned Highland Park, MI, plant where Henry Ford created the first moving assembly line and the concepts of \u201cflow production\u201d that paved the way for lean business systems.<\/p>\n

A New Management System Is Named<\/strong><\/p>\n

Womack also noted that 25 years ago this fall (2013), a team of MIT researchers published an article in Sloan Management Review that first used the term \u201clean production\u201d to describe groundbreaking findings about business management.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1988, the team, led by Womack, was getting ready to publish an article, authored by researcher John Krafcik, that would describe for the first time the new management system it had observed at Toyota during a global study of auto companies. The team needed a label. During a discussion in Womack\u2019s office, Krafcik suggested \u201clean\u201d to describe Toyota\u2019s management system.<\/p>\n

In a new essay for the just-published second edition of Gemba Walks<\/em>, Womack and Krafcik, now president and CEO of Hyundai Motors America, describe what they got right and what they got wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we got \u2018lean\u2019 right, we got \u2018production\u2019 wrong,\u201d they write. \u201cWhen we said production system in 1988, the world heard \u201cfactories.\u201d From the start, the researchers knew that lean production was a business system that included product development, supplier management, customer support, and general management of the enterprise as well as manufacturing.<\/p>\n

The Krafcik-Womack essay, \u201cTwenty-Five Years of Lean,\u201d and 11 other new ones by Womack are in the expanded second edition of Gemba Walks<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Second Life for the \u201cTemple of Flow\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a new essay about Ford\u2019s factory at Highland Park, near Detroit, Womack proposes that it could be refurbished to produce niche vehicles that are cost effective at 50,000 units annually. The 1914 plant doesn\u2019t have the capacity to support modern global auto platforms requiring a million or more vehicles annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it interesting that there are a lot of niche type products using new technologies that actually would make a lot of sense in a lower volume smaller site,\u201d Womack told The Leaning Edge.<\/p>\n

He called Highland Park \u201cthe most important industrial site in the history of the world and it\u2019s been widely ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Converting the largely empty facility to a working factory would not only restore Henry Ford\u2019s \u201cTemple of Flow\u201d but help one of the poorest areas in the U.S. \u201cIt would be a great thing for Detroit, a great thing for American history, and a great thing for the future,\u201d Womack said.<\/p>\n

Get thought-leading articles \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Womack has a lot more to say about the state of lean, gemba walks, the real work of management, \u201clean-shoring,\u201d lean in healthcare, the lean start-up movement, and other important topics. Download sample essays now from the second edition of Gemba Walks.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author and management expert James Womack talks with The Leaning Edge about the state of lean management and what\u2019s new in his latest book, the expanded edition of Gemba Walks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[44],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cLean Production\u201d Turns 25 - Lean Enterprise Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lean.org\/the-lean-post\/articles\/lean-production-turns-25\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cLean Production\u201d Turns 25 - 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