Ford

Henry Ford revolutionized the mass production system and is credited for many of the lean practices we use today. He improved efficiency by organising equipment by production sequence, and costs were decreased by standardising components.

Toyota

Toyota studied Fords methods and identified that the standardisation had severely limited the options available to the customer. This lead to the development of the 'Toyota Production System' (TPS), which places much more focus on the customers voice. TPS allowed Totota to dominate the car industry. Two of the key concepts of TPS are Jidoka and JIT:

◤ Jidoka (Automation with human touch) involves stopping a process automatically and rapidly if a defect is detected. This avoids money being wasted on subsequent processes.

◢ JIT (Just in Time) focuses on only producing what is needed, when it is needed. Anything more is treated as waste.

Value

The first step is identifying what the customer defines as value and how the products or services meet those values. Using six sigma is one method for a business to identify value, by systematically defining, measuring and analysing what their customer wants.

Waste

Lean defines anything that doesn't add value to the customer as waste, and a major part of lean is identifying and reducing these wastes. The 8 wastes (also known by the acronym 'DOWNTIME') are a useful tool for identifying wastes within a process.