Early Application: Henry Ford

In 1913, during the production of the infamous Model T, Henry Ford mixed consistently interchangeable parts with standardised work and moving conveyance to create what he called flow production. This ‘flow’ that Ford strove for started with raw materials and ended with the customer driving away in their new car, marking the first time the lean principles were put into practice.

Seen by many as the worlds’ first systematic lean thinker, Ford’s mind naturally focused on the value creation process rather than assets and organisations. And he reaped the rewards of this, seeing some incredible results:

• The time it took to build a Model T car went from 12.5 hours to just 93 minutes, cutting 11 hours of waste out of an already profitable system.
• In 1914, Ford produced more cars than all of his competitors combined.
• The productivity of his staff was five times as much as the industry standard.

Application In Japan

While Ford may have introduced many of the principles surrounding lean, they were perfected in Japan as Toyota ‘leaned out’ their processes. Although unknown to many as to why many of the ideas relating to lean reached all the way to Japan, many believe that it was to do with the countries lack of money, making it difficult for industry to finance the large inventory production methods that were common elsewhere. While others believe that the Japanese manufacturer used its country’s relatively small size to its advantage. Essentially, they could rely on suppliers delivering on time because they only had to travel relatively small distances. Toyota’s application of lean initially started in the 1930s and was further expanded upon post World War II. In 1936, the manufacturer won its first truck contract with the Japanese government. The processes were met with many new problems, to which Toyota responded by developing “Kaizen” improvement teams. 1948 marks the beginning of the Toyota Production System, formed as an evolution of these Kaizen teams. The system was developed on the back of its two pillars. They were:

• JIT   –  This is a pull system of providing the different processes in the assembly sequence with only the kinds and quantities of items that they need and only when it needs them.
• Jidoka   –   Meaning ‘automation with a human touch’, its principle lies in designing equipment to stop automatically and to detect and call attention to problems immediately whenever they occur.

The Origin of Lean

1988 sees the introduction of the term ‘lean’ first used in response to manufacturing by John Krafcik in his article Triumph of the Lean Production System. Krafcik, who at the time was working as a researcher and consultant in MIT within the International Motor Vehicle Program, coined it ‘lean’ in contrast to a more traditional, buffer system. He referenced the conception of the term to someone having a healthy diet, linking someone having excess fat to the ‘waste’ that the lean system tries to eradicate. The term was then popularised in 1990 by scientists James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Ross after the publication of their work The Machine That Changed the World. In a later volume released in 1996, simply titled Lean Thinking, Womack and Jones outlined their 5 lean principles. They were: 1. Identify Value, 2. Map the Value Stream, 3. Create Flow, 4 Establish Pull and 5. Seek Perfection