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EDITOR 'S NOTE: "Thinking Lean " is a new column contributed by a member of ASQ's Lean Enterprise Division. Watch for future installments in upcoming editions of Six Sigma Forum Magazine.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with the fact that what we call lean today originated from the Toyota Production System (TPS), which has evolved since the late 1950s and was built upon the work of W. Edwards Deming in quality and statistical process control.
However, some may not be aware that the foundation for TPS was the earlier work of Henry Ford and the much-maligned Frederick Taylor. As with most systems, TPS built on the work of the predecessors in the field.
Ford excelled at production lines in which workers could efficiently produce vehicles. The problem was the lack of variety. The famous saying that Henry Ford published in his autobiography was "Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black."' While many consider Ford to be the first manufacturer to embrace production flow, his system lacked the short setup times crucial to quick changeovers and thus producing to customer demand.
Taylor introduced the concepts of time and motion studies to industrial production systems. As lean is often misused today as a means to reduce headcount, Taylor's work also was misused as an excuse to push workers to produce more. In fact, Taylor's system touted standardization and better working conditions for workers (known as respect for people in TPS). These concepts were adopted in the postWorld War II era by the Japanese.
Today, when lean practitioners think about waste, they generally think about the seven wastes known as muda. But muda is not the only category of waste that Taiichi Ohno realized was a problem when he became manager of final assembly at the Toyota Motor Co. after World War II. There was also mura (inconsistency)...