"Lean Manufacturing: The 3rd Generation"
Industry Week
March 2004, pp. 25-30
This article explores the thoughts of a number of a number of individuals who are attempting to move the Toyota Production System to more system-wide applications, emphasizing overall organization functioning, business processes, and profit. Two names for this approach are "system kaizen" or "business process kaizen." The challenge is "dealing with non-physical inputs and outputs and much longer time frames than on the shop floor, such as the three-year product development cycle. Just as kanban cards are a method for transforming intangible information into a physical form, office applications of lean make work and information flow more visible." These individuals also stress that the lean strategy is not the same as the lean tools. Different situations call for different methods. Some of the companies and individuals featured in the article are Chris Couch (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky), Art Smalley (Lean Enterprise Institute), Steve Spear (Harvard Business School), Ian Kalinosky (Duracell), John Marushin (Alcoa), and James Womack.
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