Browse through the most commonly asked questions about lean manufacturing

This page is designed to help you find questions to some of the most common questions about lean manufacturing - also known as just in time manufacturing.

In 1990 James Womack wrote a book called "The Machine That Changed The World". Womack's book was a straightforward account of the history of automobile manufacturing combined with a study of Japanese, American, and European automotive assembly plants. The "lean manufacturing" concept was popularized in American factories in large part by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of the movement from mass production toward production as written and described in Womack's book.

A new phrase was coined, as to which is now commonly referred to as "Lean Manufacturing."

Lean supply chains can be achieved in seven steps:

Redefine the architecture of supply.
Weld the links together contractually in a much more cohesive way to remove the commercial obstacles.
Remove the obstacles to the free flow of information, both for development and operational demand needs.
Remove the obstacles to the smooth supply of goods by developing better logistics methods and systems.
Position stock strategically in the chain to accommodate known communications and logistics constraints (whilst continuing to remove the constraints afterwards) and then remove nearly (but not) all of the other stock.
Reduce Commercial Administration
Behave like one entity, by coordinating change activity.

Industries that could use lean manufacturing

Browse through the most commonly asked questions about lean manufacturing

This page is designed to help you find questions to some of the most common questions about lean manufacturing - also known as just in time manufacturing.

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