One of the hottest topics in the business world today is lean manufacturing.  A recent search at Google produced over 2 million “hits” for the term lean manufacturing, and Amazon currently offers almost 1,800 books dealing with the subject.  Popular business magazines and industry publications, as well as academic business journals, regularly tout the benefits and virtues of lean principles and practices.  Colleges and universities offer courses relating to lean manufacturing, and both industry trade associations and private consulting firms offer lean manufacturing training programs.

Lean manufacturing is the term now used to describe the management and production methodologies that were originally developed by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the years immediately following World War II.  Toyota called these methodologies the Toyota Production System.  James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos coined the term lean production in their 1990 best-selling book, The Machine That Changed the World.  Lean production soon morphed into lean manufacturing, and the newer term stuck.  Just-in-time production, continuous flow/one-piece flow manufacturing, and continuous improvement are three of the most well known lean manufacturing concepts.

Over the past two decades, companies in a wide spectrum of industries have implemented at least some aspects of lean manufacturing to improve business performance.  According to the Management Tools and Trends 2007 survey conducted by Bain & Company, 59 percent of North American respondents are using lean tools and techniques in their business operations.  As should be expected, manufacturing firms have been in the forefront of implementing and using lean.  The 2007 Census of Manufacturers survey compiled by IndustryWeek and the Manufacturing Performance Institute reported that nearly 70 percent of manufacturing companies have adopted lean manufacturing as a business improvement methodology.