The Lean CEO

FOREWORD

by Dannel P. Malloy, Governor, State of Connecticut

When I finished law school in 1980 and began my career as a district attorney, the Lean movement was just starting to reach public consciousness in the United States. The wake-up call for many of us was NBC’s documentary If Japan Can, Why Can’t We? which chronicled how Japan, led by Toyota, was overtaking the United States as an industrial power. Although the management philosophy was not identified as Lean until a decade later, it was clear that there was a systematic approach behind Japan’s commercial success that was radically different from what the business community was practicing ...