Chapter Two. A Brief History of Lean

The Toyota Production System, however, is not just a production system. I am confident it will reveal its strength as a management system adapted to today’s era of global markets and high-level computerized information systems.

Taiichi Ohno1

1. Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production (Productivity Press, 1988), p. xv.

Since World War II, rapid increases in global market access have brought ever-accelerating changes to the global competitive environment. These competitive market forces have also quickened the pace of change in manufacturing management thinking and practices. Every generation for more than 200 years has made contributions to manufacturing technology and the evolution ...

Get Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.